Geoff Jones graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. His honors thesis was a novella about dragons taking over the world.

Over the next sixteen years, Geoff worked as a video game designer, writing story and dialog for licenses such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Conan the Barbarian, LEGO, and Marvel Superheroes.

Game development taught Geoff how to engage his audience through pacing and flow. He learned the importance of keeping a character’s goals at the forefront while setting up and solving smaller mysteries along the way. 

In 2012, Geoff became a User Experience Product Manager for an analytics software company and began work on his first novel. 

Geoff Jones lives in Colorado with his wife and two daughters, and has begun work on his next novel, also about everyday folks trapped in an extraordinary (but quite different) situation.


Read Geoff's entry in The Book That Made Me series of guest posts here 

 Tom Hammock is responsible for some fantastic  production design work on some of the biggest independent horror films in recent years including You’re Next, V/H/S/2, and All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. When he is not busy designing these great films he is also busy creating fabulous graphic novels . Recently released from Archaia and BOOM! Studios is Will O’ The Wisp from Hammock and artist Megan Hutchison. The story follows a peculiar young girl, Aurora Grimeon, who is forced to move to Ossuary Isle after her parents die from eating strange mushrooms. What ensues is a dark young adult adventure that combines elements of the supernatural with the slasher genre. It’s a unique concoction, and the creative team has built a world that is magical and grim to go along with it. There’s also an adorably bizarre pet raccoon named Missy.

More recently however Hammock has been busy writing and directing his latest project The Well,  a post apocalyptic film starring one of my favourite actresses Rena Owen from the classic film Once Were Warriors 

The Well is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the very near future. Fresh water, our most valuable commodity has run out and society has collapsed. In a drought-stricken Oregon valley, a greedy water baron, like so many railroad and cattle barons of yesteryear, is determined to clear out every survivor, even by the most violent means. Only our heroine Kendal, a brave 17 year-old grown far beyond her years, stand in the way of this villain and the evil water corporation that supports him. This harrowing story is built on action, suspense and compassion for one girl's gritty determination to fight for what's right, no matter the cost.

By day, A.S.Chambers is a mild-mannered genealogist, armed only with a tweed jacket and a finely sharpened HB pencil. By night, he is the top-hatted creator of the long-suffering Sam Spallucci - investigator of the paranormal and all things weird. 

The first outing for Sam was The Casebook of Sam Spallucci, published in 2012, where the poor chap suffered such unfortunate tasks as babysitting a new born vampire, tracking down an angst-ridden poltergeist in a local high school and overcoming a lycanthropic zoo-keeper as it bayed for his blood. The next book in the series, Sam Spallucci: Ghosts From The Past, should hopefully be in print later this year. 

As well as books concerning his beleaguered investigator, Austin also whips out the occasional short horror story from time to time. The first compilation of these, Oh Taste And See, was published in February this year and, like The Casebook of Sam Spallucci, is available to buy as an ideal present for your dear old Gran at amazon.co.uk. (Let's face it, she'll prefer these books to those mint imperials that you bought for her birthday last year. She was young once too, remember!) 

Austin has a Facebook page which he would be delighted for you to follow (@A.S.Chambers) as well as the obligatory collection of ramblings in the Twittersphere (@ASChambersUK). 

There is also a lovingly crafted website for you to peruse: www.aschambers.co.uk which fills you in a little bit more about his work and has the relevant links to Amazon for his books. 

Bracken MacLeod has worked as a martial arts teacher, a university philosophy instructor, for a children’s non-profit, and as a criminal and civil trial attorney. While he tries to avoid using the law education, he occasionally finds uses for the martial arts and philosophy training. His work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Shotgun Honey, Every Day Fiction, LampLight Magazine, Reloaded: Both Barrels Vol. 2, Ominous Realities, and most recently, Beat to a Pulp Magazine. His novel, MOUNTAIN HOME, debuted last year and WHITE KNIGHT, a novella, is now available from One Eye Press.

It’s not everyday you get the chance to interview one of your horror heroes, let alone two of them at the same time. So when I got the the chance to interview Len Maynard and Mick Sims I jumped at it.  Their books have always had a place on my all time favourite list.  

Len  and Mick  have been writing together for a long time. They met in 1964, aged eleven, at Ambrose Fleming Technical Grammar School in Ponders End, Enfield. They  weren't friends immediately, that came later, when, aged 18, and they  had left school and started work - Len as a lapidary in London and Mick for Lloyds Bank.They began to talk one night, in the bar of the Crown & Horseshoes pub in Enfield, went for a long walk after closing time, and a life time of friendship was born.

They  began writing in 1972 with short horror stories that were either Pan Horror type stuff or very atmospheric mood pieces. Their  first sales were in 1974, with Curtain Call to London Mystery Magazine for £7 and a second story, Benjamin's Shadow to Hugh Lamb for his Taste Of Fear anthology. 

“Maynard and Sims. Those are the guys who write ghost stories and traditional horror, full of quiet and subtle effects, whose work you describe as 'atmospheric' because you're too old and self-consciously macho to admit they scared the crap out of you.” 
Peter Tennant

Repeated viewings of The Shining as a child have left Jacob with a love of the dark and the disturbing that really comes to life in his writing.

He works to a soundtrack of blisteringly heavy music, and, like his beloved metal, his writing is brutal, uncompromising and intense.

Jacob’s work includes: Perpetual Darkness – A collection of four pulse-pounding horror novellas; Becoming… – A blood-drenched horror novel where the survivor of a serial killer’s rampage descends into murder, madness and depravity; Karma Personified – A hitman’s confessional; Dying Breed – A terrifying series of apocalyptic horror novels; and many others.

.

 

Rob Watts' eclectic and adventurous outlook has always been prevalent in his curriculum vitae. Possessing a desire for creative outlets, he studied woodworking in high school with the intention of becoming a carpenter. While working in the foodservice industry during his high school years, he developed an interest in cooking, prompting him to enroll in a Culinary Arts program at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Earning both a degree in Culinary Arts AND Hotel/Restaurant Management, he spent twelve years in the foodservice industry; enjoying success in the various establishments in which he was employed. An extensive traveler, he has enjoyed visiting many destinations around the globe, but it was during his many visits to Iceland where he developed an interest in Icelandic folklore, inspiring him to write his debut novella "Huldufolk" in 2011. Since that time, he has published two additional novellas, "CRABAPPLES" and "Left-Hand Path", as well as the children’s book “Snowpocalypse.” Today, in addition to writing full-time, he's a partner in his family-owned custom stainless steel design business. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Jonathan Wood is an English Horror and Dark Fantasy Author who resides in Sweden. Jonathan is the author of a number of published short stories and his work has also appeared in digital formats for E-Readers and Kindle. Jonathan also reviews other authors and books in the horror and dark fantasy genre. In amongst fitness training and tennis, Jonathan also likes to dabble in a little photography, guitar playing and building custom gaming PC’s in his spare time.

Alex kimmell (the squirrel whisperer/twodoggarage/daddy not-so-much-bucks) is an accidental novelist, anti-rhyme-ologist, oxygen inhaler, carbon dioxide exhaler who often generates harmonious sounds with various instruments of different historical importance. his work has appeared on cool places around the 1’s and 0’s like Black Lantern Press, Front Row Lit, Dumb White Husband and The Wordcount Podcast. His novel “the Key to everything” and collection of short, horrific tales “A Chorus of Wolves” were released by Booktrope Publishing. come and join the neurosis at alexkimmell.com.