Stuart Woods is an avid sailor, pilot, and best-selling & award winning writer of multiple books. His non-fiction includes: Blue Water and Green Skipper, which was an account of his Irish experience and the transatlantic race.
The British publisher of Blue Water and Green Skipper sold the American rights to W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, who also contracted to publish his novel, on the basis of two hundred pages and an outline, for an advance of $7500. “I was out of excuses to not finish it, and I had taken their money, so I finally had to get to work.” He finished the book and it was published in March of 1981, eight years after he had begun it. The novel was called Chiefs.
Though only 20,000 copies were printed in hardback, the book achieved a large paperback sale and was made into a six-hour television drama for CBS-TV, starring Charlton Heston, at the head of an all-star cast that included Danny Glover, Billy Dee Williams and John Goodman.
Chiefs established Woods as a novelist. The book won the Edgar Allan Poe prize from the Mystery Writers of America. He’s been awarded France’s Prix de Literature Policiere, for Imperfect Strangers. He has since been prolific, having published his fiftieth novel, Severe Clear in September 2012. His latest book is Paris Match. After publishing fifteen novels before appearing on the New York Times bestseller list, he has since had thirty-nine straight bestsellers on the Times hardcover list. Woods lives in Key West, Florida, on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and occasionally in a New York City pied-a-terre. (Of a warm nature, he says he’s always looking for 70 degrees Fahrenheit.)
