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, slinking 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 dramatized on the Tales to Terrify podcast.
Alex independently published a dark fantasy-horror series, Witchbone, in 2018. Belatedly 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 undertaken to restore the original voice and tone that had been washed out. Witchbone Vols. 1-3 have all been re-published as 70s/80s style middle-grade fiction for adults. How’s that for niche. We’ll see if anyone’s interested.
Alex also has a small anthology of short horror stories, Where Strange Monsters Play, 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’m lucky to be alive with no criminal record.
My family history is loaded with evil witch-burning reverends and plantation era slave owners, and I am the descendent they deserve. I hope my entire personality makes them spin in their graves.
I study fungi, bugs, farming, and abnormal psychology. I’ll throw down some tarot for you if you buy me coffee. I brew my own moonshine and make tea out of the plants in my garden. I read at least one book a week and watch a movie pretty much every day.
A word about horror: Works of horror are the mad and true 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 