Adrian Cole was born in Plymouth in Devonshire, England, in 1949. His father was in the Army and the family spent 3 years in Malaya when Adrian was a young child, before settling back in Devon. He has worked as a librarian, an administrator in education, and is currently Director of Resources in a large secondary college in the town of Bideford, North Devon, where he now lives with his family. His interest in fantasy and science fiction stems from an early age, through Tarzan of the Apes, King Solomon's Mines, movies such as Earth versus the Flying Saucers and comics such as the original Classics Illustrated War of the Worlds, not to mention the works of Algernon Blackwood, Lovecraft, and Dennis Wheatley. It was while working in a public library in Birmingham in the late 60s that he first read Lord of the Rings, which confirmed something he had always wanted—to write! Inspired by the book, he hand-wrote a pretty fat epic entitled "The Barbarians," which filled 7 or 8 old school notebooks. Having bought an old typewriter, he then revised the book a couple of times and was lucky enough to sell the result, The Dream Lords, a trilogy, to Zebra Books (NY), published in the early 70s. Shortly afterwards he discovered the works of Robert E. Howard and developed an addiction for sword and sorcery that he has subsequently never been able to shake off (and is delighted to admit it).
He lives with his wife Judy, son Sam, and daughter Katia in an old blacksmith's forge in the heart of Solomon Kane country in North Devon, the rambling household also being shared by 2 jet-black feline beasts, one a slightly schizophrenic female called Schizy (Skitzee) and the other an unusually large (so far undoctored) tom, Dave Bodmin. Dave has a surname because he looks very much like the celebrated "Beast of Bodmin," an abnormally large black creature that has been seen roaming Bodmin Moors and is reputed to savage sheep. Dave has not been known to do this, but he is not the sort of creature you'd want to meet in a dark alleyway.