John Peel (writer)


John Peel is a British writer, best known for his TV series tie-in novels and novelisations. He has written under several pseudonyms, including "John Vincent" and "Nicholas Adams". He lives in Long Island, New York. While his wife is a US citizen, Peel continues to travel under a British passport.

Career

During the 1980s, Peel wrote a licensed spin-off novel based on the popular 1960s TV series The Avengers, titled Too Many Targets. He is also known for his various books based on Doctor Who, Star Trek and James Bond Jr..

''Doctor Who'' books

A friend of the television writer Terry Nation, Peel wrote novelisations of several Doctor Who stories for Target Books featuring Nation's Daleks; he is reportedly one of the few writers to have been willing to do so, given the high percentage of the author's fee that Nation's agents demanded for the rights to use the Daleks. For similar reasons, Peel is one of the few novelists to have used the Daleks in full-length, original Doctor Who novels, examples of which include War of the Daleks and Legacy of the Daleks, written for the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures range. Neither novel was especially well received by fans of the series, in part due to Peel's re-writing of Dalek history as depicted in the TV series, to bring their story more into line with Nation's vision.
With the publication of , Peel became the first author to write a full-length Doctor Who novel, featuring the Doctor, not to be based on either a TV or radio script. He had been selected by editor Peter Darvill-Evans to launch the Virgin New Adventures range, to resume the story of the Doctor's travels from where the now-cancelled TV series had left off. He also wrote the Evolution for their sister range, Missing Adventures, and also The Gallifrey Chronicles, a compendium of the history of the Doctor's planet, Gallifrey.

Select bibliography

All published by Western Publishing.
The first six books were originally published by Apple. After the cancellation of the series by Apple, they were re-printed by Llewellyn Publications between 2004 and 2005. Books seven onwards were published directly by Llewellyn. Also published in French by AdA Éditions, under the title Les mondes de la magie du Diadème.
All published by Puffin Books in 1992 under the pen name "John Vincent".
Published by Grosset & Dunlap.
Published by Pocket Books in 1995.
All published by HarperCollins. "Nicholas Adams" is also the pen name for Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald.
Peel has also written a number of Doctor Who comic strips for Doctor Who Monthly: