Borderlands 5 (44 page)
BARRY HOFFMAN is the author of four dark suspense novels;
Hungry Eyes, Eyes, Eyes of Prey, Born Bad
and
Judas Eyes
. All but
Born Bad
are part of Hoffman’s “Eyes” series.
Hungry Eyes
was nominated for both a HWA Stoker and International Horror GuildAward for Best First Novel. Hoffman was also nominated for the 2001 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, for his fight against censorship of
Born Bad
. He is editor/publisher of
Gauntlet
magazine, the only mass market magazine dealing with censorship and exploring the limits of free expression; and he is the publisher of Gauntlet Press through which he has published signed limited books by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Poppy Z. Brite, F. Paul Wilson and numerous others.
Gauntlet
won the 1999 HWAAward for Best Small Press and the Ben Franklin Award in 2002 for
Abu and the 7 Marvels
. Hoffman is using his recently-penned Young Adult dark fantasy novel
Curse of the Shamra
in public schools as part of an Authors In Residence Program. He has completed the 4th and 5th book in the “Eyes” series and is currently working on a sequel to his YA novel. He is the father of three who recently relocated to Colorado to spend time with his two-year-old granddaughter.
BENTLEY LITTLE is a prolific writer who has penned over 11 horror novels, over 100 short stories and nearly 300 articles and essays. His novels include (but are not limited to)
The Mailman
,
The Store
,
The Ignored
and his most recent release,
The Association
. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as
Cemetery Dance
,
Eldritch Tales
,
The Horror Show
,
New Blood
and many more. They have also appeared in many anthologies such as
999
,
Bad News
and
Quick Chills
to name a few. He currently lives in Fullerton, California with his wife Wai Sau and their young son. He divides his time between Southern California and his “writing territory”, Arizona.
BARBARA MALENKY, originally from Georgia, currently lives and writes in Texas. Her non-fiction has been published in national crime magazines and anthologies. Her fiction has appeared in over 300 publications, including a six-story chapbook entitled
Human Oddities
She has received honorable mention for two years in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She has recently completed her first novel and is an active member in the HWA.
JOHN MCILVEEN has a wife named Lisa. He has five daughters and a stepdaughter. He is grossly outnumbered. He purposely leaves the toilet seat up. John works at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He lives in Bradford MA. He commutes route 495 daily. John is very tense. John writes in his spare time. He has had more than twenty short stories and numerous poems (when depressed) and articles published, but he hasn’t written a novel. John has little spare time.
JON F. MERZ is best known for his hard-boiled Lawson Vampire series from Pinnacle Books
(The Fixer
,
The Invoker
,
The Destructor
, and
The Syndicate
). Jon has written full-time for several years. He has written non-fiction articles, monthly columns, short fiction, and his advertising copy has been used by corporations like Polaroid and Red Lobster Restaurants. Jon has several other supernatural and mainstream thrillers coming out soon from major publishers. He operates his website at
http://www.zrem.com.
When not enjoying life with his wife and son in Boston, Massachusetts, Jon continues to study martial arts—something he has done for the past twenty years.
HOLLY NEWSTEIN is a relative newcomer to horror fiction. She co-authored the novel
Out of The Light
(Xlibris, 2000) with Ralph Bieber, and their short stories have appeared in the anthologies
The Witching Hour, Music Horror Stories Extremes 3: Terror On the High Seas
and the forthcoming
In Laymon’s Terms.
She has also collaborated with Glenn Chadbourne on a story entitled “Deep Six,” and has appeared solo in
The Best of Horrorfind, Volume 1
and
Twilight Showcase
. Holly lives in southern Maine with the author Rick Hautala. Visit her website at
www.darkscribes.com.
GENE O’NEILL lives in the Napa Valley with his wife Kay, a substitute primary grade teacher at St. Helena Elementary School. They have been married for thirty-seven years, their grown children, Gavin and Kay Dee, living in Eugene, Oregon and San Diego. Gene has two degrees (Sac State, U. Of Minn) neither having anything to do with writing (or much of anything else). Gene describes his employment background as “rich, varied, colorful.” His brother-in-law, the president of the above plant, describes Gene as more of a “disgruntled ne-erdo-well.” After surviving the Clarion Workshop in writing in 1979 Gene has seen over 80 of his stories published. A number of these reprints are now being posted at Fictionwise.com with excellent sales and ratings. Several of his stories have garnered Nebula and Stoker recommendations. Some of these stories have been collected in
Ghosts, Spirits, Computers & World Machines
, released by Prime books in 2001. He has completed two novels,
The Burden of Indigo
and
Shadow of the Dark Angel
that will be published by Prime Books in 2002/2003 along with another collection,
The Grand Struggle
in 2004.
TOM PICCIRILLI is the author of eleven novels, including
The Night Class, A Choir of Ill Children, A Lower Deep, Hexes, The Deceased,
and
Grave Men
. He’s published over 130 stories in the mystery, horror, erotica, and science fiction fields. Tom’s been a final nominee for the World Fantasy Award and he’s a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, given in the categories of Novel, Short Story, and Poetry. Learn more about him at his official website
www.mikeoliveri.com/piccirilli
JOHN R. PLATT has published fiction in anthologies like
Horrors: 365 Scary Stories, Crafty Cat Crimes, Bell Book & Beyond
and
100 Menacing Little Murder Stories
. His first book, the short-story collection
Die Laughing
, was published in 2002. John served three terms as President of the Garden State Horror Writers.
WHITT POND was born in Lubbock, Texas, shortly after a famous UFO sighting, which explains a lot. He has at various times in his life been a Boy Scout, a West Point cadet, an MIT graduate, and a Peace Corps volunteer; and he currently resides in Massachusetts, two blocks from a really good Chinese restaurant. He likes to write horror because “It’s easier than screaming all the time.”
LON PRATER is an officer serving on active duty in the U.S. Navy. Along with his wife, Angie, and their two daughters, he has lived primarily in Hampton, Virginia, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Athens, Georgia. He enjoys writing speculative fiction and edits the bi-monthly webzine
Neverary
. This story was initially written aboard the USS Nassau during a wartime deployment to the Persian Gulf. It is his first professional sale.
BRETT ALEXANDER SAVORY is a 29-year-old Bram Stoker Award-winning editor. His day job is also as an editor, at Harcourt Canada in Toronto. He is Editor-in-Chief of The
Chiaroscuro/ChiZine
, has had roughly 30 stories published in numerous print and online publications since 1998, and has written two novels,
In and Down
and
The Distance Travelled
—both of which are currently with his agent. In the works are a short story collaboration with China Miéville, a dark comic book series with artist Homeros Gilani, and an anthology to benefit the West Memphis Three, which will surface in the fall of 2004 through Arsenal Pulp Press.
WHITLEY STRIEBER is the author of over twenty books, among them the
Hunger, The Wolfen, The Last Vampire
and
Communion.
His website,
www.unknowncountry.com
is the largest website in the world offering daily news of the edge of science and current events
DAVID J. SCHOW German-born American writer. At once inheritor of the Californian weird tradition of Richard Matheson and Dennis Etchison and leading light of splatterpunk movement, Schow’s powerful, sometimes witty, sometimes strangely sentimental stories are collected in
Seeing Red
(1990),
Lost Angels
(1990),
Black Leather Required
(1994),
Crypt Orchids
(1997),
Eye
(2000) and
Zombie Jam Breaks Scissor Cut
(2003). He is author of the novels
The Kill Riff
(1987),
The Shaft
(1990),
Rock Breaks Scissors Cut
(2003) and
Bullets of Rain
(2003). In 2001 he won the International Horror Guild’s award for Best Nonfiction for
Wild Hairs
(2000) his collection of essays from
Fangoria
magazine. As editor, he has assembled and annotated Silver Scream (1998), three volumes of
The Lost Bloch
(collecting the pulp novellas of Robert Bloch) and John Farris’
Elvisland
(2003). His screenplays include
The Crow
(1994) and he wrote the definitive book on the eponymous TV series,
The Outer Limits Companion
(hugely revised into an elaborate second edition in 1998).
BEV VINCENT has been a contributing editor for
Cemetery Dance
magazine since 2001, where he writes News from the Dead Zone and the occasional book review and interview. His book
The Road to the Dark Tower
, the first critical overview of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series, will be published by NAL in November 2004. He is a Ph. D. chemist who works for a high-tech instrumentation company in a north Houston suburb. In addition to numerous book review appearances in a local newspaper, he’s had short stories in
Cemetery Dance, Shivers 2, All Hallows
and a number of other magazines and anthologies. He’s also a co-author of over thirty peer-reviewed scientific articles, some containing words longer than this bio. See his web site: ww.BevVincent.com. Bev lives with his wife and teenage daughter. Since his daughter learned to drive recently, he’s been writing a lot more horror.
L. LYNN YOUNG began publishing her work a scant three years ago, and has since appeared in a wide variety of small press magazines and anthologies, both print and web. Look out for “Scarlet’s Dolly,” forthcoming in the
Wicked Little Girls
anthology (Allegra Press), “Jesus, Mary and Mr. Pyle” in
Scared Naked
magazine, and “Womb Full of Poppies” in
NFG
magazine.
Table of Contents
Introduction—Elizabeth E. & Thomas F. Monteleone
Rami Temporalis—Gary Braunbeck
Faith Will Make You Free—Holly Newstein
The Growth of Alan Ashley—Bill Gauthier
The Food Processor—Michael Canfield
Story Time with the Bluefield Strangler—John Farris
Answering the Call—Brian Freeman
Smooth Operator—Dominick Cancilla
Father Bob and Bobby—Whitley Strieber
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe—David J. Schow
Slipknot—Brett Alexander Savory
