After an idle youth, Alexandre Dumas went to Paris and spent some years writing. A volume of short stories and some farces were his only productions until 1927, when his play Henri III (1829) became a success and made him famous. It was as a storyteller rather than a playwright, however, that Dumas gained enduring success. Perhaps the most broadly popular of French romantic novelists, Dumas published some 1,200 volumes during his lifetime. These were not all written by him, however, but were the works of a body of collaborators known as "Dumas & Co." Some of his best works were plagiarized. For example, The Three Musketeers (1844) was taken from the Memoirs of Artagnan by an… eighteenth-century writer, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) from Penchet's A Diamond and a Vengeance. At the end of his life, drained of money and sapped by his work, Dumas left Paris and went to live at his son's villa, where he remained until his death.
John BolenJohn Bolen is a novelist/playwright/actor living in Southern California. He has been published by Indigo Rising, Scars Publications, The Write Place at the Write Time, OC180news, Eunoia Review and YouthPLAYS. John is the Producing Artistic Director of the New Voices Playwrights Theatre & Workshop.John's plays have been produced throughout the U.S. His play for a young audience, Aurelia's Magic, (under its original title Dancing on a Grave), was produced by the Vanguard Theatre and Garden Grove Playhouse. Readers Theater Television produced Dancing on a Grave, and a radioplay adaptation was produced by Shoestring Radio Theatre and was broadcast on 111 other stations across the… United States through the National Public Radio system. John has just completed a novel adapted from the story of Aurelia's Magic.As an actor, John has worked extensively in theatres throughout Southern California, although he is probably best remembered for his roles in the cult films Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and The Call of Cthulhu. He has appeared in numerous feature films and TV shows. As a voice actor, John has recorded forty audiobooks.