Terry Goodkind was born in 1948 and raised in Nebraska in the United States. Goodkind, slightly unusually for an author, suffers from dyslexia. He worked as a carpenter and a rare artifact restorer and painted some beautiful marine and wildlife paintings.
Whilst building his own home in the middle of a forest on Mount Desert Island, Maine, Goodkind began writing his first novel. The novel later became Wizard’s First Rule and was published in 1994. So began a series of books that formed the Sword of Truth series. The following year, in 1995, Stone of Tears was published and Blood of the Fold followed this in 1996. Of all of the Sword of Truth books only Wizard’s Rule and Stone of Tears have failed to
Each book in the Sword of Truth series has sold better than its predecessor and to date the series has sold over twenty million copies.
He has sold over twenty millions books and these have been translated into over twenty different languages. He also feels that while his novels are placed firmly within the fantasy genre, the philosophical and humane elements in his books take them into a different genre. He believes that the fantasy settings and themes of his books make it easier for him to get his ideas across.