Richard Louis Tierney (August 7, 1936 – February 1, 2022) was an American writer, poet and scholar of H. P. Lovecraft, probably best known for his heroic fantasy, including his series co-authored (with David C. Smith) of Red Sonja novels, featuring cover art by Boris Vallejo. He lived the latter part of his life in Mason City in the great Corn Steppes of Iowa. Some of his standalone novels utilize the mythology of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. He is also known for his Simon of Gitta series (which cross historical Gnosticism with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos) and his Robert E. Howard completions and utilisation of such Howard-invented characters as Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey. Tierney is especially renowned for his weird and fantastic verse, which has been acclaimed by such critics, writers, and poets as S. T. Joshi, Don Herron, Ramsey Campbell, Robert M. Price, Donald Sidney-Fryer, and Frank Belknap Long. In 1993, Tierney was presented with the annual Minnesota Fantasy Award. He was nominated for Science Fiction Poetry Association Grand Master in 2010.[1] Source: Wikipedia (en)