Richard Jones has spent decades hiking in the lush wilderness areas that are the setting for his genre-defying adventure series, Speakers of the Earth, and spent many years imagining and creating the work he has set there. He lives on an island in Western Washington with his wife, where until recently they shared the land with an elderly pygmy goat and an alpaca.

Jones’ debut novel, The Fireweed Entrance, pulls strongly from Jones’ deep connection with the earth, blending together elements of ecological fiction, modern mythology, fantasy, classic coming of age tales, and environmental stewardship. The Fireweed Entrance, Book One in his Speakers of the Earth series, and the concluding volume in this part of his series, Book Two, A Mountain Spruce, were both issued by Chatwin Books in 2020.