Hellbound Hearts (43 page)

NANCY HOLDER has received four Bram Stokers from the Horror Writers Association and has been nominated for two more. She coedited
Outsiders
with Nancy Kilpatrick, and is the coauthor of the popular YA dark fantasy series
Wicked
. She wrote the YA horror novel
Pretty Little Devils
and many novels in the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
,
Angel
,
Highlander
, and
Smallville
universes. A former HWA trustee, she is on the Clarion Foundation board for the Clarion program at the University of California, San Diego. She also teaches writing at UCSD and in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle; their cats, David and Kitten Snow Vampire; and Panda Monium Holder, their Cardigan Welsh corgi.

SIMON CLARK, at the age of five, narrowly avoided drowning when he fell through ice on a lake. That brush with eternity might have colored his view of life ever since. Certainly, his award-winning fiction is brushed with darkness. He lives in Doncaster, England, with his family—well away from deep water. His books include
Blood Crazy
,
Darkness Demands
,
She Loves Monsters
, and the award-winning
The Night of the Triffids
, which continues the adventures of Wyndham's classic
The Day of the Triffids
. Simon's latest novel is
Ghost Monster
, a ghoulish feast of the horrors that befall a community when they are possessed by the spirits of sadistic outlaws.

NEIL GAIMAN has written highly acclaimed books for both adults and children and has won many major awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Newbery. His novels include
Neverwhere
,
Stardust
,
American Gods
,
Coraline
,
Anansi Boys
, and most recently,
The Graveyard Book
. His collections include
Smoke and Mirrors
and
Fragile Things
.
Neverwhere
was turned into a BBC TV series, while both
Stardust
and
Coraline
have been adapted to the big screen. His multimillionselling series for Vertigo/DC Comics,
The Sandman
, was described as “the greatest epic in the history of comic books” by the
Los Angeles Times
.

DAVE M
CKEAN
is an acclaimed illustrator, graphic designer, and filmmaker. He is a long-term collaborator of Neil Gaiman and has worked with him on many titles, including
Mr. Punch
,
Signal to Noise
,
The Wolves in the Walls,
and
The Graveyard Book
. He both wrote and drew the acclaimed
Cages
and has won many awards for his illustration, including a World Fantasy Award for
The Sandman
comic series. His short films include
The Week Before
and
Neon
, and he made his feature directorial debut with
MirrorMask
for the Jim Henson Company.

STEVE NILES is one of the writers responsible for bringing horror comics back to prominence. The success of his
30 Days of Night
comic series led to a number one box-office smash with
Spider-Man
's Sam Raimi producing, David Slade directing, and Niles cowriting the screenplay. He is currently working for the top American comic publishers—IDW, DC, Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse—and recent projects include
Simon Dark
with artist Scott Hampton and
Batman: Gotham After Midnight
with artist Kelley Jones. Niles has been nominated for multiple Eisner Comic Industry Awards and was the recipient of two Spike TV Scream Awards for Best Horror comic and Best Comic Adaptation. He (and coauthor Jeff Mariotte) also won a 2007 Scribe Award for the novel
30 Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead
. At present he is writing a screenplay for legendary director John Carpenter and Dimension based on the comic
The Upturned
Stone
, and his graphic novel
Freaks of the Heartland
is being developed for film by David Gordon Green. He resides in Los Angeles.

SARAH LANGAN's first novel,
The Keeper
(HarperCollins, 2006), was a
New York Times
Editor's Pick. Her second novel,
The Missing
(HarperCollins, 2007), won the Bram Stoker Award for outstanding novel, was a
Publishers Weekly
favorite book of the year, and an IHG outstanding novel nominee.
The New York Times Book Review
recently compared her to Mary Shelley, extolling Langan's “mournful endof-the-world narrative,” and her “vision of a society perishing from within, exhausted by its own excesses.” She has published a dozen short stories, several essays, and her third novel,
Audrey's Door
, about a woman who moves into a haunted apartment building on the Upper West Side, is due out from HarperCollins in October 2009. Her website is
www.sarahlangan.com
.

NICHOLAS VINCE was born in Germany in 1958 and lives in South London. He met Clive Barker while he was at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and was later cast as the Chattering Cenobite in the first two
Hellraiser
movies, and Kinksi in
Nightbreed
. For Marvel he wrote stories for the
Hellraiser
and
Nightbreed
comics plus the series
Warheads
and
Mortigan Goth
. He modeled for the art of John Bolton and for Dave McKean in
Cages
. He served as chairman of the Comics Creators Guild. His interview series “The Luggage in the Crypt” appeared in the magazine
Skeleton Crew
and his short stories in
Fear
. Most of the details of his biography on
www.wikipedia.org
are fantasy created by his nephew. His first name is definitely not Sean.

YVONNE NAVARRO lives in southern Arizona, where by day she works as an operations officer on historic Fort Huachuca. By night she chops her time into little pieces, dividing it among her huge adopted Great Danes, Goblin and the Ghost; her husband, author Weston Ochse; her dad; her writing; and two people-loving parakeets, Edwina Allan Poe and BirdZilla. She's written seven solo
novels and a number of film tie-ins, including the novelization of
Ultraviolet
,
Elektra
,
Hellboy
, and seven novels in the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
universe. Her work has won the HWA's Bram Stoker, plus a number of other writing awards. She's currently hammering on a novel called
Highborn
. Visit her at
www.yvonnenavarro.com
or
http://yvonnenavarro.livejournal.com/
.

MARK MORRIS became a full-time writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the release of his first novel,
Toady
. He has since published a further fifteen novels, among which are
Stitch
,
The Immaculate
,
The Secret of Anatomy
,
Fiddleback
,
The Deluge
, four books in the popular
Doctor Who
range and one for the spinoff
Torchwood
, a novel entitled
Bay of the Dead
. His short stories, novellas, articles, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of the highly acclaimed
Cinema Macabre
, a book of fifty horror-movie essays by genre luminaries, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award. Forthcoming work includes a novella entitled
It Sustains
for Earthling Publications and a new short story collection,
Long Shadows, Nightmare Light
.

BARBIE WILDE is best known for her portrayal of the Female Cenobite in Clive Barker's classic horror movie
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
. She has also performed cabaret in Bangkok; appeared as a robotic dancer in the Bollywood blockbuster
Janbazz
, and was a vicious mugger in
Death Wish 3.
In the early 1980s, Barbie performed at the top venues of New York, London, and Amsterdam with the mime/dance/music group, SHOCK; supporting such artists as Gary Numan, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, and Adam & the Ants. As a television presenter/ writer, Barbie hosted
The American Hot 100
for Skytrax TV;
The Morning Show
and
Supersonic
for Music Box;
The Small Screen
for ITV;
Hold Tight
for Granada;
The Gig
for LWT; and
Sprockets
for Sky. After completing her first novel,
The Venus Complex
, about the making of a serial killer, Barbie is currently working on an erotic vampire novel called
Valeska
.

JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE is the award-winning author of more than thirty novels, including the border horror trilogy
Missing White Girl
,
River Runs Red
, and
Cold Black Hearts
,
The Slab
, the
Witch Season
teen horror quartet, and others. He also writes comic books and graphic novels. Some of his work includes the graphic novel
Zombie Cop
and the bestselling comic book
Presidential Material: Barack Obama
. His long-running horror/Western series
Desperadoes
was named the Best Western Comic Book of 2007 by
True West
magazine. He's a co-owner of specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, and lives in southeastern Arizona on the Flying M Ranch. For more information, please visit
www.jeffmariotte.com
.

NANCY KILPATRICK is an award-winning author who has published seventeen novels, around two hundred short stories, one nonfiction book and has edited nine anthologies. She writes mainly horror, dark fantasy, mystery, and erotica and has been working on two new novels over the last year. Her most recent short fiction has appeared in
Blood Lite
(Pocket Books);
Bits of the Dead
(Coscom Entertainment);
The Living Dead
(Night Shade Books); and
Traps
(DarkHart Press). Look for upcoming stories in
Darkness on the Edge
(PS Publishing);
The Moonstone Book of Zombies
;
The Moonstone Book of Vampires
;
Monsters Noir
; and
Don Juan
. She has just finished coediting with David Morrell
Tesseracts 13
, an all horror/dark fantasy anthology. She is about to edit her tenth anthology, this one all-vampire and as yet untitled. You can check out Nancy's latest at her website:
www.nancykilpatrick.com
.

GARY A. BRAUNBECK is the author of the acclaimed Cedar Hill cycle, which includes the novels
In Silent Graves
,
Keepers
,
Mr. Hands
,
Prodigal Blues
,
Coffin County
, and the forthcoming
Far Dark Fields
. A majority of the Cedar Hill short stories have been collected in
Graveyard People, Home Before Dark
, and the forthcoming
The Carnival Within
, all from Earthling Publications, as well as
Destinations Unknown
and
Things Left Behind
. His work has received five Bram Stoker Awards, three Shocklines “Shocker” Awards, an International Horror Guild
Award, a
Dark Scribe Magazine
Black Quill Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. He lives in fear of his five lovable cats, who will not hesitate to draw blood if he fails to feed them on schedule. For more information about Gary and his work, please visit his website:
www.garybraunbeck.com
.

LUCY A. SNYDER is the author of
Sparks and Shadows
,
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger
, and the upcoming Del Rey novel
Spellbent
. Her writing has appeared in
Strange Horizons
,
Farthing
,
Masques V
,
Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague
,
Chiaroscuro
,
GUD
, and
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
. You can also find her interview with Clive Barker in
Writers' Workshop of Horror
from Woodland Press. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio, with her husband and occasional coauthor Gary A. Braunbeck. Learn more about her and her books at
www.lucysnyder.com
.

CHAZ BRENCHLEY has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently
Shelter
, and two major fantasy series:
The Books of Outremer
, based on the world of the Crusades, and
Selling Water by the River
, set in an alternate Ottoman Istanbul. A winner of the British Fantasy Award, he has also published three books for children and more than five hundred short stories in various genres. His time as Crimewriter-in-Residence at the St Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project in Sunderland resulted in the collection
Blood Waters
. He is a prizewinning ex-poet and has recently been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria, as well as tutoring their MA in Creative Writing. Several of his books have attracted movie and TV interest. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.

DOUG BRADLEY is probably most famous for his role as
Hellraiser
's Pinhead. As well as the
Hellraiser
series, Doug has starred in Clive Barker's
Nightbreed
, alongside his friend Robert Englund (Freddy from
A Nightmare on Elm Street
) in
The Killer Tongue
, and in two
award-winning short horror films
On Edge
and
Red Lines
. Other film and TV appearances include
Inspector Morse
and the movies
The Prophecy: Uprising
and
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
. Doug's theater work includes his one-man show
An Evening With Death
. He also showed us his literary skills in the insightful and entertaining book
Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor
. Doug is currently a member of Renegade Arts, which has launched the
Doug Bradley's Spine Chillers
series: he performed and directed the award-winning audio/visual presentation of H. P. Lovecraft's
The Outsider
in 2008 and is currently working on a similar adaptation of Poe's
The Tell-Tale Heart
, as well as a series of horror audiobooks.