Jack Ketchum is following me.....



That's right: Jack Ketchum is following me.


On Twitter, that is.


Pardon me while I geek-out for a moment.

Who is Jack Ketchum, you ask?

Jack Ketchum is a writer. A talented writer. He's won the Bram Stoker Award FOUR times for Best Achievement in Horror Writing, as presented by the Horror Writers Association. That's like winning four Oscars. To put this feat in context, the actress with the most Academy Awards for "Best Actress" is Katharine Hepburn, who won four of the golden statuettes (in 1932, 1967, 1968 & 1981.)



The title for the most "Best Actor" awards is shared by seven different actors (Spencer Tracy, Gary CooperMarlon BrandoJack NicholsonFredric MarchDustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks) who each won two Oscars.


So that gives you some idea of how rare and difficult it is. 


And that tells you who Jack Ketchum is. And he's following me on Twitter.


Stephen King once said, "Who's the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum." (Stephen King has won SIX Stoker Awards; not too shabby, either.)


If the Master of Horror said so, it's quite likely true. The cover art alone on Jack's books is enough to disturb one. For example, here are variations of the cover art for Jack's first novel OFF SEASON (of which I'm reading chapter 1 currently):
Off Season




Even more disturbing is the cover for RIGHT TO LIFE:

This image causes me to feel lots of things. Things I'm not sure I want to feel. That in itself is fear, the bedrock of good Horror writing.


Mr. Ketchum is a pro and is where many a writer hopes to one day be. As of this writing, he only follows 215 people on Twitter. That I am one of them tickles me.


And, Mr. Ketchum shares a birthday with my wife, singer/songwriter (and Guinness World Record holder, thank you!) Taliya. They are both Scorpios born on November 10th.


To visit Jack Ketchum's website and learn more about him and buy some books, go to his website JackKetchum.net. (And to whomever is holding hostage the domain jackketchum.COM, screw you.)


To listen to samples of Taliya's beautiful, melodic, ethereal music, check out her MP3 samples at Amazon, particularly this track "Fantasy" which is one of my favorites: http://tinyurl.com/Fantasy-by-Taliya-Schneider





A big, big, big THANK YOU also to SeeingStars.com for the fascinating Oscar information. Click SeeingStars.com to visit their site for more info.

Comments

  1. I'm going to go ahead and post a comment on my own blog post because I re-read it and saw it was posted at 9:09 PM. Taliya and I were married on September 9th, 2009... 9/9/09. Interesting.....

    ReplyDelete

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