John Everson is a Bram Stoker Award-winning horror author with more than 100 published short stories and 14 novels of horror and dark fantasy currently in print. His 15th, The Bloodstained Doll, was released October 8, 2024. His first novel, Covenant, won the Bram Stoker Award for a First Novel in 2005. His sixth novel, NightWhere, was a Bram Stoker Finalist in 2013. His 14th novel, the long-awaited NightWhere sequel The Night Mother, was released in June 2023 and was nominated for a Splatterpunk Award for best novel. His characters Danika and Mila Dubov appear in the Netflix series V Wars.
Novels:
Over the past twenty years, he has published:
Covenant (2004)
Sacrifice (2007)
The 13th (2009)
Siren (2010)
The Pumpkin Man (2011)
NightWhere (2012)
Violet Eyes (2013)
The Family Tree (2014)
Redemption (2017)
The House By The Cemetery (2018)
The Devil’s Equinox (2019)
Voodoo Heart (2020)
Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds (2022)
The Night Mother (2023)
The Bloodstained Doll (2024)
His first five novels were issued in mass market and trade paperback by Dorchester/Leisure Books. Limited hardcover editions were also issued from Delirium Books, Necro Publications and Bad Moon Books.
In 2011, Amazon.com’s 47North imprint licensed his Leisure catalogue and his next three novels were released through Samhain Publishing and eventually reprinted by Dark Arts Books. Sinister Grin Press has released limited hardcover editions of Violet Eyes and The Family Tree and Thunderstorm Books has issued a limited oversize hardcover edition of Redemption.
Covenant, Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren, The Pumpkin Man, The Family Tree, Violet Eyes, NightWhere and The House By The Cemetery have been translated or are in the process of being translated and released in various countries including Poland, Turkey, France, Czech Republic and Germany.
In 2018, his first novel for Flame Tree Press, The House By The Cemetery, appeared in hardcover, paperback, e-book and audiobook formats. His fourth and fifth novels for Flame Tree are giallo homages titled Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds and The Bloodstained Doll.
Novellas and Novelettes:
In 2024, The Evil Cookie Publishing released Living Death Race: Beauty & The Brains, John’s first novella. He has also published several novelettes, including Failure, Field of Flesh and Witch Trapped.
Short Stories:
Over the past 25 years, John’s short fiction has appeared in more than 50 magazines, including Space & Time, Dark Discoveries and Grue. His work as also appeared in a couple dozen anthologies, most recently in Beyond The Veil, Survive With Me, Midnight in the Graveyard, Fearful Fathoms, Into Painfreak, Cemetery Riots and V-Wars: Night Terrors. His short stories have also been translated and published into Italian, Polish, Czech, German and French.
A wide selection of his short fiction has been collected in four full-length short story collections – Sacrificing Virgins (Samhain Publishing, 2015), Needles & Sins (Necro Books, 2007), Vigilantes of Love (Twilight Tales, 2003) and Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions (Delirium Books, 2000). He also has released a short collection of holiday fantasy stories called Christmas Tales (2010) and two additional “mini” short horror fiction collections – Creeptych (Delirium Books, 2010) and Deadly Nightlights (Blasphemous Books, 2010).
“Letting Go,” one of the short stories from Needles & Sins, was nominated for a 2007 Bram Stoker Award and five other short stories from the collection have been included in the Honorable Mention List of the annual Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology co-edited by Ellen Datlow.
He has written licensed tie-in stories for The Green Hornet and Kolchak The Night Stalker and novelettes for The Vampire Diaries and Jonathan Maberry’s V-Wars universe (Books 1 and 3). V-Wars was turned into a 10-episode NetFlix series in 2019 that included two of Everson’s characters, Danika and Mila Dubov.
Editor
John is also the editor or co-editor of the anthologies Swallowed by the Cracks (Dark Arts Books, 2011), Sins of the Sirens (Dark Arts Books, 2008), In Delirium II (Delirium Books, 2007) and Spooks! (Twilight Tales, 2004). In 2006, he founded Dark Arts Books (www.darkartsbooks.com) to produce trade paperback collections spotlighting the cutting edge work of some of the best authors working in short dark fantasy fiction today. The press has since produced seven anthologies and reissued out-of-print novels and collections by Martin Mundt, John Everson and Brian Pinkerton.
Musician
When not writing, John also enjoys working as a digital artist and musician – some of his dark techno music serves as the soundtrack to the horror fiction CD-ROM anthologies Bloodtype and Carnival/Circus, and in 2003 he scored Martin Mundt’s comedic serial killer stage play “The Jackie Sexknife Show” in Chicago. For his giallo novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds, he composed and recorded a giallo-eque theme song.
A little extra:
John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There’s also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of fellow horror author Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can’t really play but that his son likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it’s usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno and designs book covers for a variety of small presses. He also loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of ’70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a pint of 3 Floyds’ Zombie Dust Pale Ale.
For information on his fiction, art and music, poke around here at John Everson: Dark Arts at www.johneverson.com.
He is also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/johneverson, Instagram www.instagram.com/nightwhereman, TikTok www.tiktok.com/@johneversonauthor and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/johneverson.