Simon Hawke (born September 30, 1951^[1]) is an American author of mainly science fiction and fantasy novels. He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the pen name J. D. Masters and a series of humorous mystery novels. He was the Colorado Writer of the Year, 1992.^[2]

Career

As Nicholas Yermakov (he is half-Russian^[1]), his early books were published in 1981–1984, including two Battlestar Galactica novelizations. Since re-launching his career as Simon Hawke in 1984, he has produced a large volume of lighter fiction. Almost all of his books published after 1984 have been either part of a series and/or tie-in novels and novelizations.

His first major work as Simon Hawke was the Timewars series, which recounts the adventures of an organization tasked with protecting history from being changed by time travellers. In the world of the series, many people and events we consider fictional are historical, and vice versa; the action of each book in the series weaves in and out of the events of a famous work of literature. For example, in the first book in the series time travellers contesting the fate of Richard I of England become caught up in Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

He has also written a series of humorous murder mysteries which features a young William Shakespeare and a fictional friend, Symington "Tuck" Smythe.

In 2017, he received the Phoenix Award from DeepSouthCon 55.^[3]