William F. Nolan

I still have the book, the one good old Boris put together, the one that started is all: Tales of Terror, a 1943 World hardcover, featuring authors I’d never heard of – Algernon Blackwood, William Fryer Harvey, Oliver Onions…
Oh, sure, I’d heard of William Faulkner and O. Henry, but never within the context of “terror”.
Boris Karloff edited the book and selected the stories (his glowering face was on the dust jacket). I was fifteen years old when I plunked down fifty cents (half my weekly allowance) for this landmark anthology.
Things would never be the same.
Horror, terror, and dark fantasy had entered my life. The jig was up.
I discovered Ray Bradbury (in Weird Tales), and was soon devouring the dark words of Poe and Lovecraft and Coppard and Machen and Henry James (never dreaming that decades later I would have the grisly pleasure of adapting his ghost classic “The Turn of the Screw” for television).
I met Mr. Karloff himself over lunch in Hollywood and found him to be anything but “terrible”. Soft-spoken, gentle, with kind eyes (that could turn ruthless on screen), he was a sheer delight.
I’m a self-confessed horror addict when it comes to dark fiction, and my retrospective collection, William F. Nolan’s Dark Universe testifies to this abiding passion. I’ve written in a dozen other genres, from crime to sports racing, but I keep returning to my first true love with such books as Urban Horrors, Blood Sky, Nightshadows, and Dark Dimensions.
I was greatly pleased to be voted a “Living Legend in Dark Fantasy” in 2002 by the International Horror Guild – and now come this “Life Achievement Award”, a singular honor.
I could never have done it alone.
Witches
Ghouls
Goblins
Vampires
Ghosts
Demons
Zombies
Werewolves
Dark companions all.
Where would I be without them?

« Interview with Jazma Guest of Honor: PulpFest »