"FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST both is and isn't a book of film and fiction writing commentaries; yes, you'll find several reviews and (hopefully intelligent) analyses in here, but a format like that can quickly grow wearisome and repetitive . . . so I've decided to take it a couple of steps . . . well, let's say sideways: one's reaction to horror movies and literature is a highly subjective and personal thing, emphasis on the latter term. Consider this to be a thinly-disguised autobiography by means of reflections about movies, books, and writing. It's not enough for someone to simply say, 'I liked it,' or 'I really hated it'; those are not opinions in and of themselves, they are prefaces to opinions. To qualify as actual opinions, they must be followed by reasons why, and in order for you to understand the reasons why, you have to understand something about the person giving the opinion." -- Gary A. Braunbeck
Gary A. Braunbeck is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of 20 books -- evenly divided between novels and short-story collections; his fiction has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Czech, and Polish. Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications.
He was born in Newark, Ohio; the city that serves as the model for the fictitious Cedar Hill in many of his novels and stories. The Cedar Hill stories are collected in Graveyard People, Home Before Dark, and the forthcoming The Carnival Within, all published by Earthling Books.
His fiction has received several awards, including 5 Bram Stoker Awards: the first for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction in 2003 for "Duty"; the second -- also for Superior Achievement in Short Story -- in 2005 for "We Now Pause for Station Identification"; his collection Destinations Unknown won the Stoker for Superior Achievement in Fiction Collection in 2006; and 2007 saw Gary winning 2 Stoker Awards; the first for co-editing the anthology 5 Strokes to Midnight, and the second for his novella "Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway." His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction in 2005.
As an editor, Gary completed the latest installment of the Masques anthology series created by Jerry Williamson, Masques V, after Jerry became too ill to continue.
He also served a term as president of the Horror Writers Association. He is married to Lucy Snyder, a science fiction/fantasy writer, and they reside together in Columbus, Ohio.
Gary is an adjunct professor at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania, where he teaches in an innovative MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction.
His nonfiction writing book Fear In A Handful Of Dust: Horror As A Way Of Life has been used as a text by several college writing classes. (A revised and expanded edition of the book will be coming out in late 2010/early 2011, from Apex Books.) Gary has taught writing seminars and workshops around the country on topics such as short story writing, characterization, and dialogue.
His work is often praised for its depth of emotion and characterization, as well as for its refusal to adhere to any genre tropes; some joke that the term "cross-genre fiction" may have been invented to describe his work -- a rumor he does everything in his power to propagate.
