Rysa Walker an American author of science fiction, fantasy, and mysteries. Her first novel, Timebound, was the 2013 Grand Prize winner of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Early life and education Walker was born and raised in Northwest Florida. After graduating from St. Andrews University in North Carolina, she earned a PhD in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Career Walker taught political science and history at several universities before beginning to write fiction full time in 2014. After her family relocated to Cary, North Carolina in 2006 for her husband's job, she shifted to teaching her college courses online so she could work from home.
Walker's first novel, Timebound (The CHRONOS Files Book One), was originally self-published as Time's Twisted Arrow in 2012. In January 2013, she entered the book into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, competing against 10,000 self-published and unpublished novels. The Publishers Weekly review of the book during the competition called the book's heroine, Kate Pierce-Keller, the "Katniss Everdeen of time travel," adding that the story reads like a mash-up of Jack Finney's Time and Again and Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, and works as a contemporary tribute to Robert Heinlein's juvenile novels of the 1950s.
On June 15, 2013, Timebound won the contest's grand prize, leading to a $50,000 advance and a contract with Skyscape, an Amazon Publishing imprint. Walker has said the prize allowed her to take a year off from teaching to write full-time.
Timebound has been translated into fourteen languages, and the CHRONOS Files series has sold nearly half a million copies since 2013. Five additional CHRONOS novels were published through the Skyscape and 47North imprints beginning in 2016. A separate science fiction series, The Delphi Trilogy, was published by Skyscape beginning in 2017.
In addition to science fiction, Walker writes mysteries as C. Rysa Walker, sometimes in collaboration with author Caleb Amsel.
Reception Time's Edge, the second book in The CHRONOS Files, appeared at number ten on the Wall Street Journal'''s bestselling fiction e-books list for October 30, 2014.The Delphi Effect was a finalist for the 2018 International Thriller Writers Awards, a 2017 Amazon Editors' Pick for Best Science Fiction, and a 2017 Junior Library Guild selection.
The Publishers Weekly review of Now, Then, and Everywhen praised what it described as a twisty narrative blending the past and the future, predicting that fans of intelligent time-travel stories would be rewarded.
Bibliography
The CHRONOS Files
NovelsTimebound (January 1, 2014; formerly Time's Twisted Arrow) Time's Edge (October 21, 2014) Time's Divide (October 20, 2015)
NovellasTime's Echo (April 1, 2014) Time's Mirror (June 30, 2015) Simon Says (December 18, 2015)
Short storiesWhack Job (June 17, 2016) 2092 (June 18, 2016) The Gambit (June 18, 2016)
CHRONOS Origins
NovelsNow, Then, and Everywhen (April 1, 2020) Red, White, and the Blues (January 19, 2021) Bell, Book, and Key (November 16, 2021)
Short storiesThe Circle That Whines (February 4, 2020) Full Circle (February 5, 2020)
AnthologyTime's Vault (June 15, 2021)
The Delphi Trilogy
NovelsThe Delphi Effect (October 11, 2016) The Delphi Resistance (October 24, 2017) The Delphi Revolution (October 9, 2018)
NovellaThe Abandoned (June 21, 2018)
The Icarus CodeThe Cold Light of Stars (May 4, 2023) First Watch of Night (February 8, 2024) Dark Little Worlds (March 4, 2025) On Alien Skies (March 11, 2026)
Enter Haddonwood (with Caleb Amsel)As the Crow Flies (October 15, 2019) When the Cat's Away (August 14, 2020) Where Wolves Fear to Prey (August 24, 2022)
Thistlewood Star Mysteries (as C. Rysa Walker; previously published as Jessa Archer)A Murder in Helvetica Bold (May 14, 2019) Palatino for the Painter (September 26, 2019) A Séance in Franklin Gothic (September 28, 2019) Courier to the Stars (November 29, 2019) Comic Sans for the Ex (November 3, 2020)
Coastal Playhouse Murder Mysteries (as C. Rysa Walker; previously published as Jessa Archer)Curtains for Romeo (November 4, 2019) Arsenic and Olé (November 4, 2019) Offed Off-Broadway (November 4, 2019) Exes, Stage Right (October 14, 2021)
SerialImprobable: The Outlandish Adventures of Miriam Cole: Seasons 1–11'' (September 11, 2023)
Personal life Walker lived in Washington, D.C., before moving to Cary, North Carolina, in 2006 after her husband took a job in the area. She resides there with her husband, sons, and a golden retriever.
References