(Art by Erik Wilson) Richard Thomas is the award-winning author of seven books: three novels—Disintegration and Breaker (Penguin Random House Alibi), as well as Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications); three short story collections—Staring into the Abyss (Kraken Press), Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press), and Tribulations (Cemetery Dance); and one novella in The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). With over 150 stories published, his credits include The Best Horror of the Year (Volume Eleven), Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker winner), PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Shallow Creek, The Seven Deadliest, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad (numbers 2-4), PRISMS, Pantheon, and Shivers VI (with Stephen King and Peter Straub). He has won contests at ChiZine and One Buck Horror, has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and has been long-listed for Best Horror of the Year six times. He was also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller awards. In his spare time he is a columnist at Lit Reactor. He was the Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press and Gamut Magazine. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.

Kelli Owen is an American author, editor, reviewer, podcaster, and indie film producer, who has spoken at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA regarding both her writing and the field in general. While her nonfiction has appeared in various places—including the Bram Stoker Award-winner It's Alive: Bringing Your Nightmares to Life—she is primarily known for her fiction.

As a member of both the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers, she has published over a dozen books, including THE HEADLESS BOY, TEETH, and WILTED LILY (a YA series). Her short fiction has appeared alongside Stephen King, Robert McCammon, F. Paul Wilson, and Josh Malerman, among others, and was in both Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies Arterial Bloom (2020) and Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road (2018).

A book lover from a young age, Kelli spent a decade as a reviewer and editor, while running a large genre website, before returning to her roots behind the keyboard. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she now lives in the dark woods of Pennsylvania. For more information, please visit her website.

Michael Bailey is a recipient and ten-time nominee of the Bram Stoker Award, a five-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a three-time recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award, along with a number of independent publishing accolades. He has written, edited, and published many books of various genres. His latest is Righting Writing, a nonfiction narrative used as curriculum for aspiring writers, and Silent Nightmares: Haunting Stories to Be Told on the Longest Night of the Year, an anthology co-edited with Chuck Palahniuk. He is also the screenwriter for Madness and Writers, a creative documentary series about writers, and a producer for numerous film projects. He is represented by Lane Heymont of the Tobias Literary Agency.

Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Where the Bones Lie” and “Payback is Forever.” His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions” appeared in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and more.

Robert Ford has written the novels Burner, The Compound, No Lipstick in Avalon, and Blood Roses, a horror-western. He also has a collection of his short fiction The God Beneath my Garden, a novella collection, Inner Demons, and the novella Larva Me Tender.

He collaborated, with John Boden, on the novellas Rattlesnake Kisses, Cattywampus, and Black Salve, in the Knucklebucket Thang series.

With author Matt Hayward, Robert co-wrote the novel A Penny for Your Thoughts.

Robert lives in Central Pennsylvania, and is usually hard at work on at least two projects at a time. You can find out more about his upcoming releases at www.robertfordauthor.com

D. Alexander Ward is an author and anthologist of horror and dark fiction. In addition to his latest novel POUND OF FLESH, he is the author of numerous short stories and the novels BLOOD SAVAGES and BENEATH ASH & BONE.

As an anthologist, he edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies LOST HIGHWAYS: Dark Fictions From the Road and GUTTED: Beautiful Horror Stories (co-edited) from Crystal Lake Publishing as well as the anthologies THE SEVEN DEADLIEST (co-edited) and SHADOWS OVER MAIN STREET, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (co-edited), and the mini-anthology STRANGE ECHOES.

He is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and very involved in the small press publishing world of horror and dark fiction, where he runs Bleeding Edge Books.

Along with his beloved wife and daughter and the haints in the woods, he lives near the farm where he grew up in what used to be rural Virginia, where his love for the people, passions, and folklore of the South was nurtured. There, he spends his nights penning, collecting, and publishing tales of the dark, strange, and fantastic.

Damien Angelica Walters is the author of The Dead Girls Club, Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year's Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda's Song, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. Until the magazine's closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and a rescued pit bull named Ripley. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on her website at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

Jonathan Janz is a husband, father, novelist, screenwriter, and public schoolteacher. He’s represented for film and television by Ryan Lewis (executive producer of Bird Box), and his literary agent is Priya Doraswamy. His ghost story The Siren and the Specter was selected as a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Horror. Additionally, his novels Children of the Dark and The Dark Game were chosen by Booklist and Library Journal as Top Ten Horror Books of the Year. Jonathan’s main interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children. You can sign up for his newsletter (http://jonathanjanz.us12.list-manage....), and you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok, and Goodreads.

"MacLeod’s fiction is full of traps – some physical, some psychological, none easy to wriggle free of."

~ Terrence Rafferty, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Bracken MacLeod is the Bram Stoker, Splatterpunk, and Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of the novels, is the author of the novels, MOUNTAIN HOME, STRANDED, COME TO DUST, and CLOSING COSTS (available in hardcover and paperback from William Morrow).

His short fiction has been collected in WHITE KNIGHT AND OTHER PAWNS and 13 VIEWS OF THE SUICIDE WOODS, which the New York Times Book Review called, "Superb."

Before devoting himself to full time writing, he worked as a civil and criminal litigator, a university philosophy instructor, and a martial arts teacher. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and son, where he is at work on his next novel.

RACHEL AUTUMN DEERING is an Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated writer, editor, and book designer from the hills of Appalachia. Her debut prose novella, HUSK, was published in 2016 and drew praise from critics and fellow writers alike. Her upcoming novel, Wytchwood Hollow, is set for publication in 2018.

She has also written, edited, lettered, designed, and published comics and short prose for DC/Vertigo Comics, Blizzard Entertainment, Dark Horse Comics, IDW, Cartoon Network, and more.

Deering is a rock 'n' roll witch with a heart of slime. She lives with a bunch of monster masks in the wild, wild midwest.

Matt Hayward is an author of horror fiction. His first novel was released in 2017, and his latest, Those Below The Tree House, in 2020.

Lisa Kröger is the author of the Stoker- and Locus-award winning book, Monster, She Wrote, and the forthcoming Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult, as well as co-host of the Know Fear and Monster, She Wrote podcasts. Her work has been featured in Time magazine, The New York Times, Book Page, and Rue Morgue. More information available at www.lisakroger.com.

From the day she was born, Bram Stoker Award-winner and Shirley Jackson Award-nominee Jessica Landry has always been attracted to the darker things in life. Her fondest childhood memories include getting nightmares from the Goosebumps books, watching The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, and reiterating to her family that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her mental state.

Since then, Jessica’s fiction has appeared in many anthologies, including Aliens vs Predators: Ultimate Prey, Tales of the Lost, Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles, Monsters of Any Kind, Where Nightmares Come From, Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road, and Fantastic Tales of Terror, which features her Bram Stoker Award-winning short story, "Mutter." Her debut collection, The Mother Wound, is set for release in 2023; and she's edited the anthologies, That Which Cannot Be Undone from Cracked Skull Press, and the multi-nominated, There Is No Death, There Are No Dead, co-edited with Aaron J. French, from Crystal Lake Publishing.

Find her online at jesslandry.com.

doungjai gam is the author of 'glass slipper dreams, shattered' and 'watch the whole goddamned thing burn.' her short fiction and poetry have been published in LampLight, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Bad Book, and Nox Pareidolia, among other places.

born in Thailand, she currently resides in New England with author Ed Kurtz

Kristi DeMeester is the author of Such a Pretty Smile, a novel from St. Martin's Press, Beneath, a novel from Word Horde, and Everything That's Underneath, a collection of short stories forthcoming from Apex Publications.

Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Black Static, The Dark, Apex Magazine, and several others.

In her spare time, she alternates between telling people how to pronounce her last name and how to spell her first.

Find her online at www.kristidemeester.com.

Since its founding in August 2012, Crystal Lake Publishing has quickly become one of the world’s leading publishers of Dark Fiction and Horror books in print, eBook, and audio formats.

While we strive to present only the highest quality fiction and entertainment, we also endeavour to support authors along their writing journey. We offer our time and experience in non-fiction projects, as well as author mentoring and services, at competitive prices.

With several Bram Stoker Award wins and many other wins and nominations, Crystal Lake Publishing puts integrity, honor, and respect at the forefront of our publishing operations.

We strive for each book and outreach program we spearhead to not only entertain and touch or comment on issues that affect our readers, but also to strengthen and support the Dark Fiction field and its authors.

Not only do we find and publish authors we believe are destined for greatness, but we strive to work with men and woman who endeavour to be decent human beings who care more for others than themselves, while still being hard working, driven, and passionate artists and storytellers.

Crystal Lake Publishing is and will always be a beacon of what passion and dedication, combined with overwhelming teamwork and respect, can accomplish. We endeavour to know each and every one of our readers, while building personal relationships with our authors, reviewers, bloggers, podcasters, bookstores, and libraries.

We will be as trustworthy, forthright, and transparent as any business can be, while also keeping most of the headaches away from our authors, since it’s our job to solve the problems so they can stay in a creative mind. Which of course also means paying our authors.

We do not just publish books, we present to you worlds within your world, doors within your mind, from talented authors who sacrifice so much for a moment of your time.

There are some amazing small presses out there, and through collaboration and open forums we will continue to support other presses in the goal of helping authors and showing the world what quality small presses are capable of accomplishing. No one wins when a small press goes down, so we will always be there to support hardworking, legitimate presses and their authors. We don’t see Crystal Lake as the best press out there, but we will always strive to be the best, strive to be the most interactive and grateful, and even blessed press around. No matter what happens over time, we will also take our mission very seriously while appreciating where we are and enjoying the journey.

What do we offer our authors that they can’t do for themselves through self-publishing?

We are big supporters of self-publishing (especially hybrid publishing), if done with care, patience, and planning. However, not every author has the time or inclination to do market research, advertise, and set up book launch strategies. Although a lot of authors are successful in doing it all, strong small presses will always be there for the authors who just want to do what they do best: write.

What we offer is experience, industry knowledge, contacts and trust built up over years. And due to our strong brand and trusting fanbase, every Crystal Lake Publishing book comes with weight of respect. In time our fans begin to trust our judgment and will try a new author purely based on our support of said author.

To date we’ve published around 100 books, and with each launch we strive to fine-tune our approach, learn from our mistakes, and increase our reach. We continue to assure our authors that we’re here for them and that we’ll carry the weight of the launch and dealing with third parties while they focus on their strengths—be it writing, interviews, blogs, signings, etc.

We also offer several mentoring packages to authors that include knowledge and skills they can use in both traditional and self-publishing endeavours.

We look forward to launching many new careers.

This is what we believe in. What we stand for. This will be our legacy.

Welcome to Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.