by Gafford, Sam
When Fred Blosser began buying books from Arkham House in 1966, he went for Lovecraft and missed the chance to purchase a copy of Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder before that venerable Arkham House/Mycroft & Moran volume went out of print. However, he bought Deep Waters fresh off the press a year later, and eventually caught up with Carnacki elsewhere. Fred Blosser has had articles and stories published in The Savage Sword of Conan, Fantasy Book, The Howard Collector, ERB-Zine, Beat to a Pulp, Crypt of Cthulhu, The Dark Side, Armchair Detective, and Mystery Scene. He completed two unfinished stories by Robert E. Howard for publication. His collection Slammin’ Pulp Hero Stories is a Kindle book. On the daylight side of life, he has worked as a reporter, an editor, a communication director, and a civil servant. He resides in Virginia and has a wife (Donna), two daughters (Carol and Susan), and two grandchildren (Carter and Jocelyn). If Carnacki came to visit, Donna would probably quiz him about her own ghostly encounters and her near-meeting with the Men in Black—the real deal, not the movie guys.
M. S. Corley is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. His interests include but are not limited to weird fiction, ghost stories, and the early nineteenth century. He has worked on everything from comic books to video game concept art, producing work for clients such as Dark Horse Comics, Simon & Schuster, Microsoft, and Amazon Publishing. He is currently writing and drawing his own adaptation of Hodgson’s occult detective Carnacki. You can follow his progress on that project at www.thomascarnacki.blogspot.com. Corley now lives with wife, daughter, and cat named Dinah in Central Oregon. You can view his work at www.mscorley. blogspot.com or on Twitter @corleyms.
Robert E. Jefferson is an award-winning animator and academic who runs the filmmaking degree course at Northumbria University in the northeast of England. His films have been broadcast across the world and screened in international animation festivals including Annecy and Ottawa. He made his first foray into live-action filmmaking when he directed TV icon David Soul in a pilot show based on the Northumbrian folktales “The Long Pack” and “The Knock Rock Devil.” He has most recently moved into sound design and film scoring. He lives with his wife, Jan, in the Derwent Valley.
Amy K. Marshall, a former archaeologist and curator with an M.A. in maritime history and nautical archaeology, is the director of the Craig Public Library on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. She is an advocate for literacy in all its forms and was featured by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in their Digital Literacy series for libraries in 2011. She is the author of several Alaskan Gothic novels, a poetry collection, short stories, and poems. Find her online at her blog, A Diamond in the Dark (www.akmarshall.com), where she posts works in progress, ruminations about life on a remote Alaskan island, book reviews, and interviews with authors. She resides in Craig with her husband, two teenaged children, petulant cat, and psychotic Border collie.
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with eighteen novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines. His critically praised Carnacki collection, Heaven and Hell, is available as an ebook, paperback, and hardcover from Dark Regions Press. Willie lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles, and icebergs for company. When he is not writing, he plays guitar, drinks beer, and dreams of fortune and glory. For more details, visit williammeikle.com.
Robert Pohle’s first book, Sherlock Holmes on the Screen (coauthored with Doug Hart), was finished in 1975 after five years of research in Britain and the U.S., and then published in those countries by A.S. Barnes/Thomas Yoseloff in 1977. Pohle and Hart’s 1983 book The Films of Christopher Lee (coauthored with Sir Christopher himself) will be republished, updated, in 2015 by Scarecrow Press as The Christopher Lee Film Encyclopedia. Pohle’s other Sherlockian publications include a short story in Sherlock Holmes in America (2009), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower. Since he was resident in London in October 1971 for his research, Pohle was able to watch the Carnacki “Horse of the Invisible” when it was first broadcast. Among Pohle’s Western publications is the ur-Pontine Three Problems for Virgil Earp (2011). His most recent fantasy novel was The Lost Gospel of Avalon (2012), coauthored with Archer Luxley, published by Dr. George Vanderburgh’s Hugo-nominated press The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. As one might suspect from the above two clues, Pohle was honored to receive an Investiture (as “Ashenten”) as a member of the Praed Street Irregulars. For further information see his website www.robertpohle.com.
Robert M. Price has been a hopeless captive of weird fiction since discovering Poe and Lovecraft while in junior high school (do they have those anymore?). What a joy to widen the scope and discover the Valhalla of their predecessors, colleagues, and successors! Machen, Blackwood, M. R. James—and Hodgson! Price (or as his family calls him, “the amorphous proto-shoggoth”) has edited Crypt of Cthulhu as well as numerous fiction anthologies for some thirty years and polluted the weird fiction field with his own tales.
Josh Reynolds’s work has appeared in anthologies such as Miskatonic River Press’s Horror for the Holidays and in periodicals such as Innsmouth Magazine and Lovecraft eZine. In addition to his own work, a full list of which can be found at http://joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com/, he has written for several well-known tie-in franchises, including Gold Eagle’s Executioner line as well as Black Library’s Warhammer Fantasy line. And if, after finishing “Monmouth’s Giants,” you’re interested in reading more about Charles St. Cyprian and the Royal Occultist, make sure to check out http://royaloccultist.wordpress.com/ for links to other stories, as well as free fiction and contests!
Born in 1964, Paul V. Ross grew up in both London and in Essex. He has studied graphic design at the Polytechnic of Westminster and acting-directing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his early years Paul sought work within design, illustration, and sculpture. A successful competition winner for his short stories, Paul also was a winner in a professional cartoon competition with Punch magazine. At present Paul is hoping to form an audio-visual company with a view to televisual broadcasting. Currently living in West London, Paul’s hobbies are vintage television programmes, exploration and archaeology, collecting antique toys, and looking after two cats.
Charles R. Rutledge is a freelance writer living in the Atlanta area. He is the co-author of two novels, Blind Shadows and Congregations of the Dead, written with James A. Moore. Charles worked as a columnist for the Comics Buyers Guide and was an English-language scriptwriter for Jademan Comics’ Oriental Heroes series. Over the years he has published short stories, novellas, and nonfiction in various magazines, anthologies, and on the web. A lifelong resident of Georgia, Charles lives near the mountains with far too many books and a cat named Bruce.
M. J. Starling is a writer and the host of the Writer Collider podcast. His short stories have appeared in Reflection’s Edge and AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review. Audience with the Ghost-Finder premiered in London in May 2013 as part of the Wandsworth Arts Festival, and was revived in October 2013 for the London Horror Festival. M. J. can be found at MJStarling.com.
Buck Weiss is a writer and American literature scholar from Southern Illinois. He currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with his wife and two children. He teaches literature and humanities at Chattanooga State Community College. Buck is the editor of Hunting Ghosts: Thrilling Tales of the Paranormal, now available from Black Oak Media. He writes crime and horror fiction along with the occasional comic book. He has a short story in the steampunk horror anthology Machina Mortis from Fringeworks Press and one in The Blue, the Grey, and the Scarlet, out soon from Neon Moon Publications. Check out his comic books at Pilot Studios and follow him on Twitter @whybuckwhy.
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