Biography
Author, screenwriter, and musician Craig Spector developed an early fascination with the macabre after suffering severe burns in a household accident at just ten months old. As a child, he created drawings featuring skeletons and severed heads.
In 1982, Spector graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Professional Music from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, before attending the Atlanta College of Art in Georgia. He later moved to New York City, working as a street messenger while launching his writing career.
Together with former writing partner John Skipp, Spector co-authored the acclaimed horror novels "The Light at the End," "The Cleanup," "The Scream," "Dead Lines," "The Bridge," and "Animals," as well as the novelization of the 1985 horror film Fright Night. Skipp and Spector were prominent figures in the 1980s "splatterpunk" horror fiction movement. They edited the well-regarded zombie short story anthologies "Book of the Dead" and "Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2," appeared in minor roles in the films Death Collector (1988) and Nightbreed (1990), and collaborated on the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989). The duo parted ways in 1993.
Following the split, Spector pursued a solo writing career. His debut solo novel, "To Bury the Dead," was published in 2000. He followed it with "Underground" in 2005, which won the Le Prix Masterton for best foreign horror novel in 2008. His third solo novel, "Turnaround," appeared in 2010.
Spector founded and served as Chief Creative Officer of Stealth Press, an internet-based publishing company specializing in quality hardcover reprints of works by notable authors such as Ray Bradbury, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Dennis Etchison, John Shirley, William F. Nolan, Peter Atkins, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. He left the company in 2002.
He co-wrote the script for the made-for-TV disaster film Volcano: Fire on the Mountain (1997) and the feature film adaptation of "Animals" (2009), the last collaboration with Skipp. Between 1998 and 2008, Spector played in the band Smash-Cut alongside fellow authors and musicians P.G. Sturges and Richard Christian Matheson.
Craig Spector resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
