CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
MARIA ALEXANDER — Maria Alexander’s credits include stories in Chiaroscuro and Paradox Magazine, as well as anthologies such as Lost on the Darkside and Blood Surrender. An anthology she shares with three other award-winning female horror writers, Sins of the Sirens, was released in 2008 to critical acclaim. Look for her work in the queer anthology, Unspeakable Horrors: From the Shadows of the Closet. She lives in Los Angeles. For the full literary rap sheet, visit her website, www.thehandlesspoet.com.
KEVIN J. ANDERSON — Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly a hundred novels. Best known as the author of epic science fiction in his internationally bestselling Dune novels with Brian Herbert, his own space opera, The Saga of Seven Suns, and numerous Star Wars novels, Kevin is also no stranger to the horror field. His first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and his X-Files novels became hugely popular around the world; he has written many horror short stories and edited Blood Lite. He has over twenty million books in print in twenty-nine languages. His most recent novels are Jessica of Dune (with Brian Herbert), Enemies and Allies, and the first book in his epic nautical fantasy saga, The Edge of the World.
CLIVE BARKER — Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, where he began his creative career writing, directing, and acting for the stage. Since then, he has gone on to pen such bestsellers as The Books of Blood, Weaveworld, Imajica, The Great and Secret Show, The Thief of Always, Everville, Sacrament, Galilee, Coldheart Canyon, and the highly acclaimed Abarat fantasy series. As a screenwriter, director, and film producer, he is credited with the Hellraiser and Candyman pictures, as well as Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions, Gods and Monsters, and The Midnight Meat Train. Barker lives in Los Angeles.
MICHAEL BOATMAN — By day, Michael Boatman dresses up and pretends to be other people on television. He’s probably best known as the “gay black guy” from Spin City or perhaps the “uptight black guy” from Arli$$. Television addicts of sufficient age may remember him as the “haunted black guy” from China Beach. He’s been “the black guy” in feature films like Hamburger Hill, The Glass Shield, The Peacemaker, Woman Thou Art Loosed, and the upcoming film Killing Wendy. He’s darkened up shows like Law and Order SVU, Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, and The Game and appeared on Broadway in Athol Fugard’s Master Harold … and the Boys. Much of his fiction attempts to straddle the line between horror and humor. He is the author of the monster-hunter novel The Revenant Road. His short fiction has appeared in magazines like Weird Tales, Horror Garage, and Red Scream and in anthologies like Sages & Swords, Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters, Badass Horror, Voices from the Other Side, and Whispers in the Night. Some of his stories have been herded into his short-story collection, God Laughs When You Die: Mean Little Stories from the Wrong Side of the Tracks. He lives in New York with his wife and four children, works in LA, writes on airplanes, and heckles angry flight attendants. His website is www.michaelboatman.net.
GARY A. BRAUNBECK — Gary A. Braunbeck is the author of eleven novels and eleven short-story collections. Among his most popular books are the Cedar Hill novels, including In Silent Graves, Keepers, Mr. Hands, Coffin County, Prodigal Blues, and the recent Far Dark Fields. His third collection of Cedar Hill stories, The Carnival Within, is forthcoming as are the novellas In Seeing and Clipper Girls. His work has thus far garnered five Bram Stoker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, three Shocklines “Shocker” Awards, a Dark Scribe Magazine Black Quill Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife, author Lucy Snyder (Spellbent, Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, Sparks and Shadows).
AXELLE CAROLYN — Axelle Carolyn has been a horror fan for as long as she can remember. Brought up on a steady diet of scary movies and Stephen King novels, she was for several years a regular contributor to genre publications such as Fangoria, L’Écran Fantastique, and SFX, for which she traveled around the world to cover film sets and festivals. Today she still writes a monthly column on horror movies on entertainment website IGN, but she divides most of her time between acting and writing fiction. Her first book, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium, a study of horror since 2000, came out in late 2008. She lives in London with her husband, writer-director Neil Marshall.
SIMON CLARK — Simon Clark lives in Doncaster, England, with his family. When his first novel, Nailed by the Heart, made it through the slush pile in 1994, he banked the advance and embarked upon his dream of becoming a full-time writer. Many dreams and nightmares later, he wrote the cult zombie classics Blood Crazy, Darkness Demands, This Rage of Echoes, and The Night of the Triffids, which continues the story of Wyndham’s classic, The Day of the Triffids. His revival of the wickedly ambulatory plants won the British Fantasy Society’s award for best novel. Simon’s latest novel is The Midnight Man, a story of murder, madness, and ghosts, featuring Vincent Van Gogh in the most turbulent year of his life. Forthcoming are Ghost Monster and Whitby Vampyrrhic. Simon also experiments in short film, and he created Winter Chills for BBC TV. Simon’s website is www.bbr-online.com/nailed.
JOHN CONNOLLY — John Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1968, and is the author of eleven books, including the collection of supernatural short stories Nocturnes and his most recent novel, The Lovers.
MICK GARRIS — Award-winning filmmaker Mick Garris began writing fiction at the age of twelve. He spent seven years as lead vocalist with the acclaimed tongue-in-cheek progressive art-rock band Horsefeathers. His first movie business job was as a receptionist for George Lucas’s Star Wars Corporation. Steven Spielberg hired Garris as story editor on the Amazing Stories series for NBC, where he wrote or cowrote ten of the forty-four episodes. Since then, he has written or coauthored several feature films (*batte ries not included, The Fly II, Hocus Pocus, Critters 2, Riding the Bullet) and teleplays (Amazing Stories, Quicksilver Highway, Virtual Obsession, The Others, Desperation, Nightmares & Dreams capes, Masters of Horror). His directorial credits include many of the above, plus Psycho IV: The Beginning and Sleepwalkers, and network miniseries The Stand, The Shining, and Steve Martini’s The Judge. As a prose fiction writer, his works include A Life in the Cinema and Development Hell. Garris lives in Southern California with his wife, Cynthia, an actress, musician, composer, and muse.
JEFF GELB — Haunted: Dark Delicacies III is Jeff Gelb’s twenty-second anthology as editor or coeditor, and his twenty-third published book of fiction. He is still thrilled to work with writers he has admired his entire lifetime.
HEATHER GRAHAM — New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Heather Graham has written over one hundred novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, and Christmas family fare. She has been honored with awards from Walden Books, B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, and more. Heather is the proud recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers. Heather has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, Mystery Book Club, People, and USA Today. She has appeared on many newscasts including Today, Entertainment Tonight, and local television. The complete Flynn Brothers Trilogy has been released: Deadly Gift, Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Night. In 2009, she released Nightwalker, Dust to Dust, Unhallowed Ground, Home in Time for Christmas, and her first illustrated book, There Be Dragons. Each year she hosts the Vampire Ball and Dinner theater at the RT convention, raising money for the Pediatric Aids Society, and in 2006 she hosted the first Writers for New Orleans Workshop to benefit the stricken Gulf region.
SIMON R. GREEN — Simon R. Green has written thirty-seven books, all of them different. He has two degrees (one more and he could have been a singing group) and has worked as a shop assistant, bicycle repair mechanic, journalist, actor, and mail-order bride. He lives in the small country town of Bradford-on-Avon in the southwest of England. He has never worked for MI5; don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
JOSEPH V. HARTLAUB — Joseph V. Hartlaub is an attorney specializing in entertainment law with special emphasis on musical and literary intellectual property rights. He is also senior writer and reviewer for bookreporter.com and music-reviewer.com. Joe’s short story “Crossed Double” appeared in Thriller 2, an anthology of original thriller stories published in 2009. Joe made his acting debut in the film LA-308, released in 2009. He lives in Westerville, Ohio, with his wife and four children. A firearm, bladed weapon, and personal protection enthusiast, Joe characterizes himself as “a very boring guy who gets to live a very interesting life.”
DEL HOWISON — Del Howison is an award-winning editor and an author. His books have been nominated for or won the Bram Stoker Award, the Black Quill Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Rondo Award. He is also co-owner of America’s only all-horror book and gift store, Dark Delicacies, in Burbank, California. He can be found at www.darkdel.com.
DEL JAMES — Del James is a meat-eating, cigar-smoking, pro-choice, sober atheist. When not out pillaging the free world as the road manager for Guns N’ Roses, he can be found lurking in the shadows of Hollywood’s seediest dive bars and rock clubs. Depending on his mood, James writes horror fiction, screenplays, and music. Before being reprinted in 2008, his collection of short horror stories, The Language of Fear, was among the top ten most sought-after, out-of-print horror/sci-fi titles. He lives in Southern California.
JOHN R. LITTLE — John R. Little’s first novel, The Memory Tree, was published in 2007 and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. His following four books, Placeholders, Miranda, The Gray Zone, and Dreams in Black and White, were all recently published novellas. He’s been publishing horror and dark fantasy since the early 1980s.
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON — Richard Christian Matheson is an acclaimed novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter-producer. He has written and cowritten feature film and television projects for Richard Donner, Ivan Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Bryan Singer, and many others. He has also written pilots for comedy and dramatic series for Showtime, Fox, NBC, ABC, TNT, HBO, FOX, Spike, and CBS. Matheson’s critically lauded fiction has been published in major award-winning anthologies, including multiple times in The Year’s Best Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy, as well as Penthouse and Omni magazines. Matheson’s stories have been collected in Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks and Dystopia. His debut novel, Created By, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for best first novel.
ARDATH MAYHAR — Ardath Mayhar, born in 1930, began her writing career as a poet when she was nineteen. She began writing science fiction in 1979 after returning with her family to Texas from Oregon. She has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Mark Twain Award and won the Balrog Award for a horror narrative poem in Masques I. She has had numerous other nominations for awards in almost every fiction genre and has won many awards for poetry. In 2008 she was chosen by the Science Fiction Writers of America as their Author Emeritus. Mayhar has written over sixty books, ranging from science fiction to horror to young adult to historical to Westerns, with some work under the pseudonyms Frank Cannon, Frances Hurst, and John Killdeer. Joe R. Lansdale says simply, “Ardath Mayhar writes damn fine books!”
DAVID MORRELL — David Morrell is the author of First Blood, the award-winning novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a PhD in American literature from Pennsylvania State University and taught in the English department at the University of Iowa until he gave up his tenure to write full-time. His numerous bestselling novels include The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for a top-rated NBC miniseries broadcast after the Super Bowl), The Fraternity of the Stone, and Creepers. Cofounder of the International Thriller Writers organization, Morrell is a three-time recipient of the Horror Writers Bram Stoker Award. His short stories have appeared in many of the major horror/fantasy anthologies, including the Whispers, Shadows, Night Visions, and Masters of Darkness series, as well as The Twilight Zone Magazine, The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, Psycho Paths, Prime Evil, Dark at Heart, Metahorror, Revelations, 999, and Red-shift. In The Successful Novelist, he describes what he has learned during his almost four decades as a published author. Visit him at www.davidmorrell.net.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK — Chuck Palahniuk is the author of nine novels and two books of nonfiction. His latest novel, Pygmy, was published in 2009. For more information, go to chuckpalahniuk.net.
ERIC RED — Born in Pittsburgh and raised in New York and Philadelphia, Eric Red began his career in the film industry at age nineteen with his nationally distributed urban Western short, Gunmen’s Blues, quickly followed by a second award-winning short, Telephone. After attending the American Film Institute, Red got his start in Hollywood by penning two classic horror thrillers, The Hitcher and Near Dark. The first feature he wrote and directed was the crime thriller Cohen and Tate. Over the past two decades, Red has written and/or directed numerous major films in the horror, thriller, and Western genres. His scripts include Blue Steel and The Last Outlaw. He wrote and directed Body Parts, Undertow, and Bad Moon. A second major Universal remake of one of his earlier films, Near Dark, is under way. His next original script, the car-chase thriller Stopping Power, is currently in pre-production. Red also works in the comic and graphic novel field, where he recently created and wrote the successful sci-fi horror comic series Containment for IDW Publishing. Red’s latest film as a writer/director is 100 Feet. He is currently developing the contemporary vampire film Nightlife and a film version of Jack Ketchum’s Off Season. Red and his wife, Meredith, live in Los Angeles.
VICTOR SALVA — Victor Salva had written and directed over twenty shorts and feature-length films before graduating high school in his hometown of Martinez in Northern California. In the late 80s, Salva’s homemade horror short Something in the Basement won at the Chicago Film Festival, picked up an ACE Cable Award, and brought him to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who produced Salva’s first theatrical feature, Clownhouse, a low-budget thriller about killer clowns that kick-started Salva’s career as the award-winning writer-director of numerous feature films in various genres, most notably the science-fiction drama Powder. In 2001, Salva wrote and directed Jeepers Creepers, his throwback to the old-style horror films he loved as a boy. Salva followed with Jeepers Creepers 2. In 2005, he did the big-screen adaptation of the bestselling book Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and in 2007 wrote a teleplay for NBC’s short-lived horror series Fear Itself In 2008 he penned the modern-day ghost story about Alcatraz Island titled “The Wind at the Door” and, as of this writing, is working on Jeepers Creepers III: Cathedral, which will be the final installment in his Jeepers Creepers trilogy.
STEVEN WEBER — With a wide range of acclaimed film, television, and theater credits to his name, Steven Weber has established himself as one of the most diverse and respected talents in the industry. In 2007 Weber received critical acclaim for his performance as network honcho Jack Rudolph in NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He has starred in several popular series such as Wings, Once and Again, and The D.A. He can also be seen in current episodes of Brothers and Sisters and Without a Trace. He made his New York theater debut opposite Geraldine Page in Odets’ Paradise Lost. On Broadway he appeared in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. In 2002 he took over for Matthew Broderick in The Producers and later starred in London opposite Kevin Spacey in the Old Vic production of National Anthems. Weber made his writing debut with his critically acclaimed film Club Land, costarring with Alan Alda as a struggling father-son team of theatrical agents. Alda earned Emmy and SAG award nominations for his performance. Weber’s affinity for all things horror and fantasy led to his starring in the ABC miniseries The Shining as well as cowriting and directing two episodes of The Outer Limits. He recently adapted the famous Bernie Wrightson–illustrated story “Jenifer” for the Masters of Horror series. His other forays into the genre include Reefer Madness and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.