A native of Yorkshire, England, I'm the eldest son of ten siblings and they loved it when I told them my own brand of bedtime stories. I learned early in life to face challenges head on and was a real scrapper never turning down a fight if the cause was good enough. I've been in business since I was a six-years-old when I discovered I could easily turn knowledge into opportunity, utilizing this experience for my first novel series, Lizzie. Later, as an expert in my field of mining engineering, I travelled internationally soaking up dangerous experiences or information I later utilized in my novels. Joyce edits and publishes my books and is also co-author of 4 of our single titles. She adapted one of my short stories for two kids'chapter books with accompanying audio ... the "Moonbeam Series." She is also co-author of our 2nd Gold Medal winning novel, Whispers Across Time. Read more about us and our books on our new website: www.joycesandilands.com and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jrobertwhittleauthor  

2007 - Winner of a Gold Medal in the 2007 Independent Publisher Awards (IPPYs) for Best Fiction Regional Category: Canada-West for Robert's 3rd novel in Victoria Chronicles Trilogy, "Loyalty's Haven." Again in 2008, Robert and Joyce repeated this feat by earning Gold in the same category for "Whispers Across Time."

This all began back when I was in Grade School and I earned a set of Charles Dickens novels for my essay writing. Later I graduated from mining college at Leeds University becoming the youngest mining engineer in England's history. I played cricket in Northern England (becoming a rather infamous wicket keeper in the '60s for my daring and often dangerous style!)