Warren C. Norwood remembered drawing careful curlicues across a sheet of paper at a very early age. Then he asked his mother if it was writing yet. It didn’t become real writing for many years. But putting words on paper was always his first love.

Drafted into the United States Army in 1966, he served in the 173^rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. He returned stateside in 1968, and his daughter was born a year later. When he left the Army, he moved to Denton, Texas, to earn his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Texas.

Warren’s Career as a Novelist

His first novel, An Image of Voices, was published in 1981. On the strength of that novel he was nominated for what was then called the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. It now is known as the Astounding Award. Then as now, it was a significant honor. He received a second nomination after his second novel Flexing the Warp was published. The books combined his love of poetry and folklore with some of his wartime experiences.

His first two stories about the adventures of contract diplomat Gerard Manley eventually multiplied into a four-book series called The Windhover Tapes. In 2023 Weird Sisters Publishing plans to bring the whole series back into print (and for the first time as ebooks). The retitled Windhover Tetralogy has new covers (Warren hated his old covers), but the books themselves remain true to the original text.

Norwood published thirteen science fiction novels in his life and left several unfinished works at his death. His widow G. S. Norwood inherited the rights to many of them. Stay tuned for more Weird Sisters reissues.

Man of Many Talents

In addition to writing novels and poetry, Norwood was a highly respected writing teacher. More than 50 of his students gained professional publication. They include novelists Viqui Litman, Lori Wilde, and Deborah Crombie.

He met G. S. Norwood at a Kansas City science fiction convention in 1983. He talked her into moving to Texas in 1985, and they married in 1988.

He had a lifelong desire to play music, but didn’t find the right instrument until G. bought him a mountain dulcimer for Christmas in 1987. From then on, he became a passionate advocate for the dulcimer and music in general. In the last decades of his life he wrote a number of dulcimer tablature books and taught anybody who would stand still and listen to his spiel.

Warren C. Norwood died in 2005 from complications caused by his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Read more about Warren C. Norwood’s Windhover novels on their new webpage.