Jay Ruud

Jay Ruud is the author of a new series of mystery novels revolving around the legend of King Arthur, featuring the venerable court spellbinder Merlin and his young assistant, the page Gildas, who investigate the crimes.

Following the success of the first novel in the series, Fatal Feast, the second novel, The Knights Riddle: What Women Want Most, is due to be released on June 22, 2016, and can currently be pre-ordered on either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Jay Ruud has also authored four previous books of literary criticism and scholarship (one on Chaucer, one on Dante, one on Tolkien, and an encyclopedia of medieval literature), in addition to a few dozen articles on topics like Arthurian literature, Tolkien, Chaucer, the mystic Julian of Norwich, and medieval drama.

Drama is one of Jays special interests, and as an avid amateur Thespian he has played various parts over the years in regional and community theater productions of Shakespeare (recently, e.g., Brabantio in Othello), musicals (most recently the Narrator and Mysterious Man in Into the Woods), and more modern straight plays. He recently played Lady Bracknell in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest, where he had the interesting experience of playing his own daughters mother. Fortunately she is past the age when this could mess her up for life.

He does have two spectacular children, an awesome wife, three loving dogs and a cat who resents them all, and four astounding grandchildren, including a pair of toddler twin boys.

In real life, he is Professor and Chair of the English department at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where he has taught for thirteen years, prior to which he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He has a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan, and believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.