During his time at Fitchburg State College, he became interested in fantasy after reading J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, given to him as a Christmas gift.

[4] In 1982, Salvatore started writing more seriously, developing a manuscript, Echoes of the Fourth Magic, about a submarine sucked into a post-apocalyptic future that resembled a fantasy world.

[12] In 1994, Salvatore branched out beyond working for TSR; he signed a three-book deal with Warner Books for what became The Crimson Shadow series.

For his part, Salvatore felt bullied by the company to which he had contributed such a valuable property, and signed a three-novel deal with Del Rey instead for what became The DemonWars Saga.

Salvatore wrote Vector Prime, which was published in 1999 as the first novel in the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series.

Randy Stradley, then an editor at Dark Horse Comics, suggested killing Chewbacca, and the decision was made.

[14] Much later, after Disney bought the rights to Star Wars in 2012, it declared in 2014 that all Expanded Universe works released before 2014 were non-canon.

Chewbacca's death in Vector Prime was cited as a major reason for revoking the canonical status of so many works.

He wrote the story for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC video game Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004), working with the design team at Stormfront Studios.

Salvatore was hired as creative director for the newly created game developer 38 Studios, owned by former baseball player Curt Schilling.

He wrote the dialogue and created a backstory spanning 10,000 years for the fantasy game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released in 2012[18] and sold over one million units.