LEVERETT BUTTS (story contributor) is the award-winning author of the Guns of the Waste Land series, a four-volume retelling of the King Arthur legends as an American Western. His short fiction (written both by himself and with Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker) has appeared in in various publications and anthologies such as Weird Tales magazine, the Kolchak 50th Anniversary Deluxe Special, Classic Monsters Unleashed, Dracula Unfanged, and Shakespeare Unleashed. He teaches American literature at the University of North Georgia, and lives in Carrollton, Georgia, with his wife, son, dog, and cat.
GREG CHAPMAN (cover designer) is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Queensland, Australia, specialising in the horror field. Trained as a graphic designer and visual artist, Greg has provided artwork for various magazines, comics, graphic novels and promotional designs for the Horror Writers Association and the Australasian Horror Writers Association. He also specialises in book cover design and has created cover art for many authors and publishers, including IFWG Publishing. Greg is also a Bram Stoker Award, Australian Shadows Award and Aurealis Award-nominated author. You can find out more about his writing at www.darkscrybe.com.
SAL CIANO (story contributor) is an author and editor based in South Florida. When not working or spending time with his friends, family and dogs, Sal spends time appreciating and delighting in the strange parade of the completely absurd, absolutely weird, heartbreakingly ephemeral, and breathtakingly bizarre experiences that comprise living life in South Florida.
JACK DANN (story contributor) has written or edited over eighty books, including the international bestseller The Memory Cathedral: a Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci, The Rebel: an Imagined Life of James Dean, The Silent, Bad Medicine, and The Man Who Melted. His work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Ray Bradbury, J. G. Ballard, Mark Twain, and Philip K. Dick. Library Journal called Dann “…a true poet who can create pictures with a few perfect words,” and Best Sellers said that “Jack Dann is a mind-warlock whose magicks will confound, disorient, shock, and delight.”
He is a recipient of the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award (twice), the Australian Aurealis Award (three times), the Chronos Award, the Darrell Award for Best Mid-South Novel, the Ditmar Award (five times), the Peter McNamara Achievement Award and the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Premios Gilgames de Narrativa Fantastica award. He has also been honored by the Mark Twain Society (Esteemed Knight).
His latest novel is Shadows in the Stone: a Book of Transformations (IFWG). New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson called it “such a complete world that Italian history no longer seems comprehensible without his cosmic battle of spiritual entities behind and within every historical actor and event.” His most recent books include The Writer’s Guide to Alternate History (Bloomsbury) and the collections Masters of Science Fiction: Jack Dann (Centipede Press) and Islands of Time (Cemetery Dance).
Dr. Dann is also an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. He lives in Australia on a farm overlooking the sea.
CLAIRE FITZPATRICK (story contributor) is an editor and award-winning author of speculative fiction and non-fiction. She is the 2020 recipient of the Rocky Wood Memorial scholarship fund for her non-fiction anthology A Vindication of Monsters—Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (IFWG Publishing International 2023) and the winner of the 2017 Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism for The Body Horror Book (2016). Her article ‘How Mary Shelley Continues to Influence Modern Science Fiction’ (Aurealis 145) was nominated for the 2022 William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review. Her fiction collection Metamorphosis was hailed as “a wickedly gruesome collection”, “graphic and disturbing”, “engaging and darkly beautiful”, and “simply heroic”. Claire is the current president of the Australasian Horror Writers Association and runs a women-in-horror blog. She lives in Brisbane with a menagerie of animals and her two eldritch offspring. Visit her at www.clairefitzpatrick.com.au.
CHANTAL HANDLEY (cover artist) was born in England and graduated from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia in 1998 with a BA in Character Animation. Chantal now has over 20 years’ experience in animation and graphic design and has a studio in Queensland. Her art is inspired by the films she loves, mostly horror movies from the ’70s and ’80s, but she adores anything “Halloween”. Her artwork is handmade using soft pastels on paper. Her work can be seen in Fangoria magazine, the Printed in Blood art books, The Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine created by Richard Klemensen, Kensington Gore Publications and The Creators Unite magazine. Chantal was inspired by the work of Mike Hill to create her cover piece for Nosferatu Unbound.
AARON HARVIE (story contributor) is a former rock band manager, cook and TV show host. He is owner of the retro horror brand Blood, Brains & Aliens, author of the novel The End of Everything We Know and was a AHWA Shadow Awards finalist in 2022 for the anthology comic book Frankie’s Drive-In Ozploitation Marathon. Aaron is also the writer, director & producer of the chart-topping sci-fi/horror podcast Baron Sordor’s Theatre of the Doomed.
NANCY HOLDER (story contributor) is a New York Times best-selling author of approximately a hundred book-length projects and hundreds of short stories, essays, and articles. She received the Faust Grand Master Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers in 2020. In 2020, she won the Bram Stoker Award for Graphic Novel for Mary Shelley Presents Tales of the Supernatural, and she received her seventh Bram Stoker, the Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Horror Writers Association in 2022.
ALAN PHILIPSON (story contributor) has written more than 130 novels and other projects under his own and house names. He has been a professional editor and book doctor for three decades, working on fiction, nonfiction, and memoir.
Although Nancy Holder and Alan have collaborated informally for many years, they formed a writing partnership in 2015, producing comic books, graphic novels, and short fiction for a variety of publishers. Nancy and Alan both live in the Pacific Northwest. Go to: www.nancyholder.com, and facebook.com/holder.nancy/ for news of both.
Their story in this Nosferatu collection is a prose prequel to their second noir comic and graphic novel series They Call Me Midnight for IPI Comics, which features art by John K. Snyder III. “In the Lands of Thieves and Phantoms” details the supernatural “birth” of their character Mezzanotte, a vampire-who-is-not-a-vampire, plagued with all the memories—and bloodlust—of his progenitor, Count Dracula, and yet he has never tasted blood. Rejecting his vile heritage, but accepting the burden of its guilt, he has become a monster all his own.
STEVE KILBEY (poetry contributor) is Australian rock music royalty. He has written, performed and produced over 22 solo albums, 30 with rock legends The Church, and frequently collaborates with notable artists worldwide. However, he is a prolific artist in many media; his creative oeuvre spans three books, 750 songs, pages of poetry and hundreds of paintings. Genre material is one of his talents, as seen by horror-oriented prose-poetry that appeared in Cthulhu Deep Down Under Vol 3, and the dark historical-fantasy, Vale of Tears, co-written with Nicole Madunic and illustrated by Keith Donald, that is underway for IPI Comics.”
LESLIE S. KLINGER (introduction contributor) is is the editor of the highly-acclaimed New Annotated Dracula, New Annotated Frankenstein, and the two-volume New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft as well as the anthologies In the Shadow of Dracula and In the Shadow of Edgar Allen Poe, featuring 19th century supernatural fiction. Together with Lisa Morton, he’s also edited the anthologies Ghost Stories Weird Women, Weird Women II, and Haunted Tales, all with extensive selections of Victorian horror. He co-edited (with Eric Guignard) the HWA’s eight-volume Haunted Library of Horror Classics and an edition of Phantasmagoriana. His latest book is New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
JIM KRUEGER (story contributor) is one of the top-rated writers currently working in American comics. Significant successes include the prestigious Earth-X Trilogy from Marvel Comics, and Justice (a New York Times Bestseller, and winner of an Eisner Award) from DC Comics, with colleagues Alex Ross and Doug Braithwaite. In addition, he has had notable projects with Avengers, X-Men, Star Wars, The Matrix Comics, Micronauts, and Batman. With Ross again, and others, he did Avengers/Invaders, and Project Superpowers for Dynamite Entertainment. He has been a creative director at Marvel Comics, and is also a freelance comic book writer/property creator whose original works include The Foot Soldiers, Alphabet Supes, The Clock Maker, The High Cost of Happily Ever After and The Last Straw Man.
JULIA KRUK (essay contributor) is Chair of the Dracula Society, probably the oldest and longest-running Society devoted to Bram Stoker’s novel—and its myriad incarnations—anywhere in the world. Her love of supernatural fiction (and cinema) led her to join the Society way back in 1977, taking over as Chair in 1998. Julia’s teenage years were spent devouring Pan Books of Horror Stories, classic Gothic fiction, and spending evenings watching double bills of obscure US and European horror films at the local fleapit cinema. Pioneering works on horror cinema, such as Carlos Claren’s An Illustrated History of the Horror Film and David Pirie’s A Heritage of Horror were a huge influence, while at the same time studying the Gothic novel at university.
Joining the Dracula Society meant that she finally found herself amongst kindred spirits—with those who love Gothic and vampire fiction in general, as well as those whose main passion is for horror movies. Over the past twenty-five years Julia has sought to combine both the Society’s cinematic and literary interests: Frankenstein trips to Geneva (the Villa Diodati, where Mary Shelley’s novel was born) and to Germany, as well as repeated trips to Romania (from Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace in Sighisoara to the location of Dracula’s fictional castle in the Borgo Pass).
When she is not planning where to travel, Julia also reviews books and plays for the Dracula Society’s magazine, and has co-edited two anthologies of vampire and Dracula- related short stories. She also attends as many fantasy, horror and ghost story festivals and conventions as she can fit in, and visits her local cinema every week. She lives in London with her partner and two cats, in a house that’s far too small for their vast joint collection of genre DVDs, Blu-rays and books.
KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT (story contributor) has been working in the darker alleyways of speculative fiction for much of her career. She is the author of two award-winning novels, Madigan Mine and Perfections, along with numerous pieces of short fiction and poetry. Her most recent works are Hard Places, a collection of short fiction, and Never Afters, a novella series of retold fairy tales. She produces and co-hosts a literary discussion podcast, The Writer and the Critic, and holds a PhD in creative writing. Kirstyn lives in Ballarat, Australia, with fellow writer Jason Nahrung and two distinctly non-literary felines. www.kirstynmcdermott.com.
BRAD MENGEL (story contributor) is a lifelong reader and pulp fan so it was only natural that he would turn to writing. His non-fiction book, Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction, was the first major work on the paperback heroes of the ’70s and ’80s, such as The Executioner and The Destroyer. He is also the author of The Unofficial Guide to The Scorpion and The Mummy Universe, exploring the world of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies. His fiction work includes new adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Domino Lady and Senorita Scorpion. He is the author of the novel Australis Incognito, a new pulp novel set in Australia with a team of multi-generational heroes. For IFWG he has contributed to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not and Dracula Unfanged.
JASON NAHRUNG (story contributor) grew up on a Queensland cattle property and now lives in Ballarat with his wife, the writer Kirstyn McDermott. The author of four vampire novels and more than 20 short stories, his fiction is mostly anchored in the speculative genres and typically is darkly themed. This interest has expanded into the realm of climate fiction, which led him to complete a PhD in creative writing from The University of Queensland. Having developed a liking for editing during 30 years of work as a newspaper journalist, he also offers freelance editing and manuscript appraisal services. Find him online at www.jasonnahrung.com.
DILLON NAYLOR (internal art contributor) is an award-winning Ballarat-based artist and writer who has been a central part of the Australian comic book scene with long-running characters including “Da ’n’ Dill,” “Batrisha the Vampire Girl” and “Rock ’n’ Roll Fairies” since the early 1980s. He is currently collecting his previous work into hardcover books and developing new projects using his distinctive brush and ink style.
STEVEN PAULSEN (editor) is an award-winning speculative fiction writer and editor. His bestselling spooky children’s book, The Stray Cat, illustrated by the acclaimed artist Shaun Tan, has seen publication in several English and foreign language editions. His horror, science fiction and dark fantasy short stories have appeared in books and magazines around the world. The best of his weird tales can be found in his short story collection, Shadows on the Wall, which won the Australian Shadows Award for Best Collected Work. His new YA Historical Fantasy novel, Dream Weaver, set in 15th century Ottoman Turkey, was released by IFWG Publishing in 2023. Find him online at: www.stevenpaulsen.com.
PETER RAWLIK (story contributor) is a long-time collector of Lovecraftian fiction, and in 1985 stole a car to go see the film Reanimator. He successfully defended himself by explaining that his father had regularly read him The Rats in the Wall as a bedtime story. His first professional sale was in 1997 but he didn’t begin to write seriously until 2010. Since then, he has authored more than fifty short stories and the Cthulhu Mythos novels Reanimators, The Weird Company, Reanimatrix, and The Eldritch Equations. In 2014 his short story Revenge of the Reanimator was nominated for a New Pulp Award. In 2015 he co-edited Legacy of the Reanimator for Chaosium. Somewhere along the line he became known as “the Reanimator guy,” but he fervently denies being obsessed with the character. He lives in southern Florida where he works on Everglades issues and in his spare time tries to go fishing.
CHRISTOPHER SEQUEIRA (editor) is an award-winning fiction editor and anthologist (and also a writer himself), specialising in comic-book and prose material in the mystery, horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. Previous anthologies for IFWG Publishing International include Cthulhu Deep Down Under (Vols 1 to 3); Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud; Caped Fear: Superhuman Horror Stories; Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not; Dracula Unfanged, and the forthcoming comic book chapter-novel anthology Superhumanity Vol 1: The SuperAustralians.
DEBORAH SHELDON (story contributor) is an award-winning author and editor from Melbourne, Australia. She writes short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. Her award-nominated titles include the novels Cretaceous Canyon, Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and the collections Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories and Liminal Spaces: Horror Stories. Her most recent work is the novella Redhead Town.
Deb’s collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows Best Collected Work Award, was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award, and longlisted for a Bram Stoker. Her short fiction has been widely published, shortlisted for numerous Australian Shadows and Aurealis Awards, translated, and included in various “best of” anthologies.
She has won the Australian Shadows Best Edited Work Award twice: for Midnight Echo 14 and for the anthology she conceived and edited, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies. As a senior editor at IFWG Publishing, Deb specialises in horror anthologies.
Other credits include TV scripts such as Neighbours, Australia’s Most Wanted and State Coroner; magazine feature articles; non-fiction books (Reed Books, Random House); stage plays; poetry; and award-winning medical writing. Visit Deb at http://deborahsheldon.wordpress.com.
JIM SHEPARD (story contributor) has written eight novels, including most recently Phase Six and The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction and the Clark Fiction Prize, and five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner. Seven of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and two for Pushcart Prizes. He’s also won a Guggenheim Foundation Award, the Library of Congress/ Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction and the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. He teaches at Williams College.
DACRE STOKER (essay contributor) is the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker and the international best-selling co-author of Dracula the Un-Dead (2009), and Dracul (2018). Dacre is also the co-editor of The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years (2012). Dacre is a native of Montreal, Canada. He taught Physical Education and Sciences for twenty-two years, in both Canada and the U.S. He has participated in the sport of Modern Pentathlon as an athlete and a coach at the international and Olympic levels for Canada for 12 years. Dacre has consulted and appeared in recent film documentaries about vampires in literature and popular culture: The Real Vampire Files (2010 History Channel), The Tillinghast Nightmare, (2014 Historical Haunts), Secrets of the Dead (2015 PBS), Mysteries at the Museum, (2017 Travel Channel) Legend Hunter (2019 Travel Channel) and American Vampires (2022 Fox Nation).
He currently hosts tours to Dublin Ireland, Whitby England, and Cruden Bay Scotland, to visit places where Bram Stoker lived, was educated, worked, researched, and wrote Dracula. He also leads groups to Transylvania to explore both the life and times of the historic Vlad Dracula III and also the locations where Bram Stoker set his famous novel.
H. K. STUBBS (story contributor) is an Australian writer, journalist and creative producer who loves following stories and paths for the discoveries along the way and the surprise at the end of the journey. Stubbs’s stories and essays have been published in Apex Magazine, Nightmare Fuel Magazine, Kaleidotrope, Midnight Echo, and books published by CSFG, Black Beacon Books and IFWG Publishing (Killer Creatures Down Under, Spawn, Spawn II, and A Vindication of Monsters). Her non-fiction appears in We Are Gold Coast, Nevertheless and Binna Burra’s Art Nature Science. She won the Aussiecon 4 short story competition with “The Perforation.” Her story “Uncontainable” was shortlisted for an Australian Shadows Award, and she won a Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. When not writing or caring for her kids she’s happiest rock climbing and exploring the mountains of South East Queensland. Follow her adventures and climbs on Instagram @helenstubbs, Twitter/X @superleni, and her blog https://helenstubbs.wordpress.com.
STEVE RASNIC TEM (story contributor) is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. His novel Ubo (Solaris Books), a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, is a dark science fictional tale about violence and its origins, featuring such historical viewpoint characters as Jack the Ripper, Stalin, and Heinrich Himmler. He has published over 500 short stories in his 45+ year career. Some of his best are collected in Thanatrauma and Figures Unseen from Valancourt Books, and in The Night Doctor & Other Tales from Macabre Ink. You can visit his home on the web at www.stevetem.com.