Wizards of the Coast Publishing Group described 2002 as a 'banner year' and cited the performance of two of its titles on the New York Times Best-Sellers List as proof.  Dragons of a Vanished Moon, the third installment in the War of Souls fantasy trilogy by the team of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman made it to #10 on the Times list in June, while R.A. Salvatore's The Thousand Orcs managed to remain on the Times list for ten straight weeks, a record for a WotC fantasy fiction title.  Each of the previous volumes of Weis and Hickman's War of Souls trilogy, which is set in the WotC's Dragonlance universe, also made an appearance on the N.Y Times Best-Sellers List, while the signature character of Drizzt Do' Urden, introduced nearly a decade ago in R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf trilogy, has propelled Salvatore's last seven hardcover titles to N.Y. Times best-seller status.  In The Thousand Orcs Salvatore placed his hero in extreme jeopardy in a setting derived from WotC's The Forgotten Realm, the most popular setting for D&D roleplayers.

In addition to his work with the WotC Publishing Group, R.A. Salvatore is a very busy writer with more than a few irons in the fire.  CrossGen made a comic book version of Salvatore's Demon Wars series of fantasy novels, the first entry in its Code Six line of comics, and now comes word via the Publisher's Weekly Newsline that book distributor CDS (see 'Bookstore Distribution Scorecard') is branching out into publishing (Company President Gilbert Perlman called it 'the next logical step' for CDS) with the publication of Salvatore's new novel The Highwayman in the spring of 2003.