Ray Zacek is a retired federal officer living in Tampa, Florida, with his wife, artist Theresa Beck. A flaneur and inveterate scribbler, Ray writes horror, dark fiction, and crime/noir. His work has been published by Critical Blast, Denver Horror Collective, Tule Fog, Allegory Online, All Due Respect, Shotgun Honey, among other venues. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association.
C.C. Winchester’s love of horror began at the tender age of five, when she started sneaking into the living room late at night to watch zombie movies with her parents. Her mother said that though her infiltration was discovered, and she was promptly removed, she would return in what she thought was stealth mode, only to be removed again. She currently writes in Dallas, Texas.
David Rose served in the United States Marine Corps from 2002 to 2006, during which deploying to Iraq to participate in the second battle of Fallujah. Since trading the sword for the almighty pen, he’s crafted multiple collections and composite novels: Forsaken Fantastic and Amden Bog being fine examples. A forthcoming work is Monsters in the Bush, a collection of Lovecraftian military tales, soon brought to the world by Screaming Banshee Press. He lives in Orlando, Florida. He is a founder and co-chair of the HWA committee Veterans in Horror.
Luciano Marano is an award-winning writer, journalist, and photographer, the author of a trilogy of werewolf novellas, The Ambush Moon Cycle, and many short stories which have appeared in anthologies such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, The Best New Weird Horror, Monsters, Movies & Mayhem, and Crash Code, as well as Nightscript, PseudoPod, and Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. His written and photographic reporting has earned a number of industry accolades, and he was twice named a Feature Writer of the Year by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. A U.S. Navy veteran originally from rural western Pennsylvania, he resides near Seattle.
Pamela K. Kinney gave up long ago ignoring the demanding voices in her head and has written been writing ever since. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits,” was runner-up for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award and considered one of the seven best genre short fiction for that year. She has various short stories and poems published in fiction and nonfiction anthologies, magazines, and online zines, a science fiction novella, an urban fantasy novel, five nonfiction ghost books, and a nonfiction cryptid book. Her horror poem, “Dementia,” got her mentioned in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Thirteen.
Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of some thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Most recent are Don’t Fear the Reaper and the ongoing Earthdivers. Up before too long are The Angel of Indian Lake and I Was a Teenage Slasher. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.
Pedro Iniguez is a Mexican-American horror and science-fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. He is a Rhysling Award finalist and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award for his speculative poetry. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror, Shadows Over Main Street 3, A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories, Worlds of Possibility, Tiny Nightmares, Star*Line, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, and Infinite Constellations, among others. He can be found online at www.pedroiniguezauthor.com
Photo credit: Stephanie Augello
Born and raised in New York City, Luisa began her career as a journalist in the late 90s; her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications such as New York, Latina, USA Today, The New York Times, and many more. Her other creative work includes illustration and two murals currently displayed at the World Trade Center. Inspired by her fascination with the cinema, Luisa also made a brief but successful foray into acting, starring in the award-winning 2006 indie film Day Night Day Night as well as the titular role in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2007 short film Anna.
Jonathan Reddoch is co-owner of Collective Tales Publishing. He is a father, writer, editor, and publisher. He writes sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and especially horror. He has been working on his enormous sci-fi novel for over a decade and would like to finish it in this lifetime if possible. Find him on Instagram: @Allusions_of_Grandeur_
Photo credit: Kevin Peragine Photography
Vincent Tirado is a non-binary Afro-Latine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in bioethics. Their first novel, Burn Down, Rise Up (2022) was recognized with the Pura Belpré Award, and nominated for both the Bram Stoker and Lambda Literary Award. We Don’t Swim Here (2023) is their newest novel. When they’re not writing, you can catch them playing video games or making digital art. Find them on Twitter @v_e_tirado or visit them on their website www.v-e-tirado.com for more information.
Photo credit: John Kaczanowski
Wendy N. Wagner is a writer and Hugo award-winning editor. Her books include the forthcoming cosmic horror novel The Creek Girl (Tor Nightfire, 2025), The Deer Kings, The Secret Skin, and the Locus best-selling An Oath of Dogs. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in seventy-some publications, running the gamut from horror to environmental literature. She is also the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog. You can find her at winniewoohoo.com.
My first novel Paradise was a love story in the South Pacific during the Age of Discovery (my second novel was Ring) and my third novel was also situated in the South Pacific, the story centers around a destined love story between a crew on a tuna fishing ship and a lovely female singer-songwriter. I personally am a yachtsman, so the ocean is the one situation I can really show my best.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro started writing stories at age six; she’s still at it.
Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror?
Nancy Holder is the former vice president and former board member of HWA. She is New York Times bestselling author of over a hundred book-length projects and hundreds of short stories, essays, and articles. She has received 7 Bram Stoker Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association and was named Faust Grand Master from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. She is known for writing material for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other intellectual properties, as well as novelizing movies such as Wonder Woman and Crimson Peak. She taught in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program offered through the University of Southern Maine for thirteen years, and many of her students have gone on to high-profile publishing success. She has been “investitured” [sic] as a Baker Street Irregular and an Adventuress of Sherlock Holmes. She is currently writing the forthcoming supernatural comics
They Call Me Midnight
Editor, anthologist, and reviewer Paula Guran has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than fifty novels and collections featuring the same. She was senior editor for Prime Books for seven years. Previously, she edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Pocket Books. Guran edits the annual Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series (first ten volumes with Prime; now published by Pyr). In an earlier life, she produced the weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited Horror Garage (earning another IHG and a second World Fantasy nomination), and has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications. The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 2 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2022. Guran currently reviews for Locus Magazine. She lives in Akron, Ohio, near enough to her grandchildren to frequently be indulgent.
I came to editing by a unique route. I had a background in journalism/editing as a teenager, but my first career was in technical theatre. My second career was as a full-time mom (and consequently, school/community volunteer). Although I was a science fiction and fantasy reader, with some exceptions, I wasn’t a big horror fan until I started discovering a lot of great writers/fiction around 1994. I wanted to spread the word and help writers and just sort of fell into it via the internet.
Ellen Datlow, of course. Also, Gardner Dozois, Ann VanderMeer, David Hartwell, Kathryn Cranmer, Gordon Van Gelder, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, and more.
More the changes to publishing as a whole rather than just horror. The internet provided me with a way to make myself a niche in the field. Print-on-demand provided me entry to professional-level work that led to other things. Borders book chain wanting more genre fiction from independent presses gave me a full-time job. Lots of other things, of course, including the rise of fantasy and urban fantasy, played parts.
Not really, at least no more than society in general. At first, I think people assumed I was younger than I am. And since I entered the field at a relatively late age, I never particularly advertised my age.=&0=&
Not really in horror, but the orcamancer in Sam J. Miller’s
Blackfish City
Kathryn Ptacek is the editor of the landmark Women of Darkness I and Women of Darkness II, published at a time when most anthologies included few or no women writers. She knew they were out there, though. She has published numerous novels, short stories, articles, reviews, and poetry in various genres. She edits the monthly HWA Newsletter. She is also the recipient of three of HWA’s awards: The Silver Hammer Award, the Mentor of the Year Award, and the Richard Laymon President’s Award. Her books are available on Amazon and from Crossroad Press as e-books. She also sells extra copies of her print books; contact her at gilaqueen@att.net or find her on Facebook.
The first two novels that sold were historical romances (Satan’s Angel and My Lady Rogue). I had always loved history, and at that time, historical romance was hot hot hot … so I thought, what the heck! I’ll give it a try.
As it happens I have some darker elements in my historicals… I wasn’t even aware that I seemed to be moving in that direction … But looking back, I can see I was drawn to horror, although it wasn’t a separate genre as such back then. Long before that I had entered a radio’s writing contest about the Christmas spirit, and my entry had this dark creature crouching on someone’s roof late at night. Well, not precisely Santa or festive! And when I was eight or so, I did a series of watercolor comics which featured monsters. And when I was five and went to a New Year’s Eve party with my folks, I wandered through the house and found an older kid watching a movie:
Frankenstein
Photo Credit: Misha Stone
Nisi Shawl’s debut novel Everfair, an alternate history of Africa’s Congo region, was a Nebula Award finalist. They’re the author of the Otherwise Award-winning story collection Filter House. They edited both volumes of the acclaimed New Suns anthology series, winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, and Ignyte awards. With Cynthia Ward they co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text on inclusivity for over a decade. Recent publications include the horror collections Our Fruiting Bodies and Exploring Dark Short Fiction 3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl, as well as Speculation, a middle grade fantasy novel about redeeming a family curse.
Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what
were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror?
Photographer’s Credit: Marilyn Gallagher
Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has built a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. In the US he was lead writer on NBC’s Crusoe and creator of CBS Television’s Eleventh Hour. His fifteen novels include Chimera, Oktober, and Valley of Lights. He’s the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James. http://www.stephengallagher.com
I got my professional start in radio drama with science fiction and thrillers and an early TV gig on Doctor Who, but even then I could see that this wasn’t my real path. Not in prose fiction, anyway, which is where I really wanted to make a mark. I’d read a lot of SF in my teens but all the new work seemed to be from writers with the hardest of hard science backgrounds, speculating on a level I could never hope to reach.
But then the strands of what I’d been doing came together in a way that I hadn’t predicted, with a genetic thriller that echoed themes of Mary Shelley and Moreau in a present-day setting. I ran the idea past my first agent and she encouraged me to run with it. That was Chimera, and it set me on the horror track. I researched the science but it was the darker implications of the story that gripped me. I began to sense how there are story patterns that tap into the human subconscious at the deepest levels, universal patterns of fear and desire. They can play in any genre but horror’s where they flourish.
By the grace of the junior library and the Salford market comic book stand I came in with a solid classical education in Wells, Conan Doyle, Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Anthologies were great for exploring and I was drawn mostly to the horror of commonplace settings. Lovecraft didn’t grab me, and for Machen and Dunsany the most I can say is that I was “aware of their work” (which was Stephen King’s diplomatic response when I asked our publisher to comp him a copy of
The Boat House)
