Eight-year-old Alex was dropped off at a movie theater to see Snow White (alone, because GenX) and decided to ditch the Seven Dwarves for the more intriguing Dawn of the Dead. This turned out to be a gateway drug to Stephen King paperbacks, John Carpenter films, and experimenting with gory special effects makeup using the contents of Gramma’s cosmetics bag.
Hooked for life by tales of monsters, mayhem, and madness, Alex began filling a trunk load of cheap composition notebooks with stories, characters, doodles, and ideas, stalking around old graveyards, tromping through the woods at night, and creating a junior neighborhood watch devoted to identifying local cryptids.
Alex’s writing has been published in Novel Noctule and on the Tales to Terrify podcast.
Alex independently published a fantasy-horror series, Witchbone, in 2018. Upon realizing that a lot of bad advice had been taken and ill-advised adjustments had been made to the original story, sanitizing them for younger readers (or for their parents, if we’re being honest) these versions were pulled, and an editing/re-writing project was set in motion to restore the original voice and tone that had been washed out of them.
These are not stories written for kids, though younger readers are still welcome. These are stories for former kids who are now grown up and miss the kind of darkly imaginative fiction they had when they were kids and don’t shy away from bloodshed and colorful language.
Witchbone Vol. 1 was re-published in March 2024, along with a small anthology of short horror stories, Where Strange Monsters Play, both available on Amazon.
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A note from Alex:
I’ve flown helicopters and ultralights, traveled across Africa and the Middle East, met a handful of semi-famous people, had my photo published in a Complete Idiot’s Guide, gotten lost in Puerto Rico, gone night-time scuba diving without certification, “borrowed” a jet-ski from a Lutheran minister, and been punched in the face by a twelve-foot Burmese python.
I am a short, stocky, wild-haired tangle of Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh. My family history is loaded with witch-burning reverends and plantation era slave owners, and I am the descendent they deserve (working-class brawler, cheerful atheist, and a gun-toting Yankee loud-mouth liberal).
I’m obsessed with fungi, bees, and abnormal psychology. I take too many pictures of rocks and plants. I’ll throw down some tarot for you if you buy me coffee. I drive an electric car. I brew my own alcohol and grow my own tobacco (weather permitting). I read at least one book a week and watch a movie pretty much every day.
Why do I love and revere horror over all other genres? Works of horror are the mad descendants of fairy tales, the old, original folk stories that were bursting and bleeding with heartbreak, terror, and death. They were a way for people to share and express their fears and their grief, before the censorship and safety brigade pulled their teeth and claws and stuck them in a fancy party dress that itches and doesn’t suit them.
Now the horror genre serves that purpose. Long live the Boogeyman.
~Alex
Alex Parris Norton: Court Jester of Horror 