C J Ballantyne

Christopher James Ballantyne was born in Kabiningie, South Australia, which is now just a railway station in the Barossa Valley. Chris obtained his first tertiary qualifications at Flinders University. Chris is married and has four children, and two grand children. He lives with his wife, Lise, and two of their children, in the top end of Australia where he works for the Charles Darwin University as a Lecturer in the School of Nursing.

Chris has spent the last thirteen years in nurse education and, prior to that, worked as a clinical nurse in various parts of outback Australia. It was while Chris was working as a nurse the small Aboriginal community of Yuendumu that the idea for the Crystal Realm trilogy was born. The early drafts were typed in 1996 using a Word Perfect program and a ‘massively powerful’ 386 computer! Due to a new addition to the family and a career move to Tasmania, only four chapters were written and the manuscript was shelved until one day in early 2008 when Chris managed to convert the original Word Perfect file to a Microsoft Word file and, as they say, the rest is history! Now, after three years researching and writing, The Crystal Realm, Krytor’s Return is published.

Chris has a great advantage when it comes to editing and proofing his work as Lise has a Diploma in Editing with the Australian Collage of Journalism. He gives her a chapter and it invariably comes back covered in red marks and ready for a re-write!

Chris’s other interests, besides nursing and teaching, are fossicking and gemology, chess, caving, gaming on the PC, and of course reading. His favorite authors are J.R.R Tolkien, Asimov, Heinlein, and Donaldson and anything that is epic! His love for caving and caves of all kinds provided the impetus for the main character’s entry into the fantasy world of the Crystal Realm.

Chris has finished writing the second book in the trilogy, “The Crystal Realm –The Lost Manuscripts”, which takes readers deeper into the adventures of Nathan, Delicia, Tsi Karl and Axel in the world of Thuromest. This book is currently in the editing process, so it will not be long before the second book is ready to be published. The final book, “The Crystal Realm – The Ice Shall Flow” has been outlined with an aimed publication date in late 2013.

Chris’s sincere hope is for anyone who reads the story to enjoy it for what it is: an adventure and an opportunity for those who love to read to find themselves lost in the pages of an epic urban fantasy.