SNS Staff
She Never Slept (and neither do they)
Editorial and Reviewing Staff
Creator/Editor/Reviewer
Sarah L. Covert is is a fiction writer living in Charlotte, North Carolina with her adorable cat Misha and her wonderful husband, Henry. She grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, where her love for reading and writing science-fiction, strange tales and horror began. She was only 10 years old when she wrote her first scary story. She lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade, where her love for the strange and unusual was fostered. Sarah’s interest in the unusual has landed her many fascinating opportunities. In addition to several published poems and articles for online publications, she also created an expansive mythos for an alien culture featured in a sci-fi board game entitled “You ‘N’ IT“. Sarah has even worked in film and television. She was Second Assistant Director for a zombie feature film called “Flesh Of My Flesh“. Later, she worked as the Associate Producer of the local public access program “Northwest Artist Spotlight”, and has contributed her talents to a smattering of short films. For several years she collaborated with Lurker Films, coordinating the “H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival” and “Zompire: The Undead Film Festival“. Now she is here to bring you the latest in Science-Fiction, Strange Tales and Horror!
“Someone once asked what it was that first drew me to horror, science-fiction and strange tales. That’s easy – Drive-In Theater Double Features. As a child my family and I would regularly go to the drive-in (back when they were far more prevalent). Usually they would play a “kid friendly” movie as the opener and a more adult movie later in the evening when the kids should have been sleeping. I never slept.” – Sarah L. Covert
Assistant Editor/Reviewer
J R Wright is a fiction writer living in Downtown Los Angeles, California with her precocious daughter Talyan. She grew up moving frequently and found that the most faithful of friends were those that came in the form of books, TV, & Movies. From a very young age, she was entranced by the Creature Feature Sundays and other weekend horror programs, especially those hosted by Vincent Price. Her obsession with watching The Munsters and the The Addams Family, she always felt a kinship with those of a stranger origin. Her biggest early influences were the YA novels of Christopher Pike, and the B-Horror flicks of Romero, Raimi, and her biggest fear Pumpkinhead and with no slight to Creepshow and Tales from the Darkside. She currently is working in the comic book industry with horror artists Nat Jones and Jason Craig on their respective properties, and has written/edited for online web survival guide: Dead and Living It!
Minion (Reviewer)
Patrick J. Kennedy has been a comics fan since before he could read and still remembers the first time he saw The Blob, peering around the corner of the couch while his older brothers watched the 4:30 Movie. Cinema, particularly the phantasmagorical, is a lifelong passion, as filmmaking runs in Patrick’s blood. His father and grandfather were both accomplished cinematographers – the younger having worked on such films as Goldfinger & The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, and the elder having documented the Hindenburg disaster. A classically trained actor and stage-combatant, Patrick has performed off-Broadway and toured nationally. Patrick recently produced the world premier of Edgar Award winning author Joe R. Lansdale‘s play “By Bizarre Hands” and his production company, BellMojo Productions, is developing a musical based upon Mr. Lansdale’s cult novella, Bubba Ho-Tep.
Minion (Reviewer)
Lee Clark Zumpe is a fiction writer living in the Tampa Bay area with his wife and daughter and a black Bombay cat named Samhain. Lee’s inclination toward horror manifested itself early in his childhood when he began a Saturday afternoon ritual that included watching a “horrible old movie” on Dr. Paul Bearer’s Creature Feature, flipping through the latest issue of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland, and reading Gold Key Comic classics like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, The Twilight Zone and Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Later on, he discovered Poe, Lovecraft and other masters of the genre and gradually began amassing a collection. Somewhere along the line, he began writing and selling fiction. His work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies over the last two decades. In 2002, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of South Florida. By day, he is a proofreader and entertainment columnist, more eccentric than mild-mannered, working for Tampa Bay Newspapers.
Minion (Reviewer)
Joe Pettit Jr. is a writer and musician living in Eugene, Oregon with his sons, Milo and Julian. Contaminated at an early age by drive-in revelations provided by such horror films as The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Haunted House of Horror, and The Valley of Gwangi, Joe reinforced the taint by surreptitiously sneaking late night viewing sessions of B movie classics that left him gibbering beneath the covers. Exposure to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft solidified his lifelong love of weird tales. Joe has written for various publications including VideoScope, Ugly Things, Images: an Online Journal of Film and Culture, and the All Music Guide Online. He contributed an essay on Lars von Trier’s cult classic The Kingdom to the perpetually forthcoming book Cutting Edge: The Most Controversial Horror Films of All Time, edited by Jay Slater and Barry Keating. He is an infrequent contributor to his own blog, The Journal of Weird Studies. In addition, Joe performs music regularly throughout the Pacific Northwest with his bands Alpha Dahlia, Chicken Town: a Tribute to Bob Dylan, and Long, Tall & Ugly, and plans on completing his Lovecraftian rock opera set in 1980’s music video corporate culture when the stars are finally right.
Minion (Reviewer)
Alanna Quinn is probably the only reviewer for SNS that does not embrace writing as a medium for expression as the other Minions do, however she does have a life-long love for the written word. A Portland, Oregon native, she watched Sinister Cinema on KATU as a child and developed a yen for kaiju films from Toho. By the time she reached grade school, she possessed a library card and discovered Universal Studios monsters and how to create monster makeup effects (good thing the title was free for purchase, she had to have it). Over the years she has enjoyed the works of Poe and Romero, Barker and Corman, Lovecraft and Carpenter with the lists ever expanding thanks in large part to her volunteering at The HP Lovecraft Film Festival and Zompire: The Undead Film Festival . She endeavors to absorb as many genres available while balancing out her other “hobbies” i.e. dressing up as the King In Yellow and building Kilted Cthulhu figures.
Minion (Reviewer)
Trevor Curtis is a freelance writer living in the Charlotte, NC suburbs. He remains an unrepentant Midwesterner, with a fondness for loud music, conspiracy theorists, and obscure b-movies. A graduate of Columbia College in Chicago, his work has appeared in such disparate places as Dorkgasm, The Juggler, and Cabarrus Now magazine. His latest semi-lucid ramblings appear on his website, Keep Passing the Open Windows.
