The original author of the Dragonlance Chronicles (not!) revealed for the very first time

Update: YoDanno has retracted the claim, after Margaret Weis confirmed the contract was for a Western series of novels and not Dragonlance.

Way back in 1983, when TSR was plotting what they called "Project Overlord", they had a plan for a line of gaming materials and a line of tie-in novels. Margaret Weis would edit the novels and Tracy Hickman, along with TSR's editorial team, would oversee the whole story and the gaming materials. TSR hired a "proper" science fiction/fantasy author of significant experience to write the books, similar to how SFF megastar Andre Norton had written the first Greyhawk novel a few years earlier under Gary Gygax's direction.

However, that author failed to deliver. It's been suggested that they kept creating their own plot twists and story ideas (that dragged the story away from the outline, which it needed to stick to to tie-in properly with the gaming storyline), and basically were not gelling. Eventually TSR cancelled the contract and Weis & Hickman agreed to join forces to write the novels directly, with the rest becoming history: The Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, by some estimates, is the biggest-selling epic fantasy trilogy of the 1980s.

The identity of that original author has never been revealed, at least until today. Dragonlance historian YoDanno received a copy of the TSR contract confirming that SFF author Ron Goulart (1933-2022) was the original contracted author for the trilogy. Goulart worked extensively in SFF media tie-ins, as well as mysteries and original fiction, and is known to have been the "actual" author of the TekWar series, working on an outline provided by William Shatner.

This wasn't the first time a relative SFF "big name" nearly got involved in the franchise. In 2009 Jim Butcher, author of The Dresden Files and the Codex Alera series, was asked to write a "reboot" of the original trilogy. Butcher came on board under the impression that the project had the approval of Weis & Hickman, only to withdraw when it became clear that was not the case. Weis & Hickman have subsequently returned with new Dragonlance novels.