#Read about Guest #Author Jack Wallen

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I was born an artist. I know that sounds crazy (or maybe even a bit cliché), but, for whatever reason, a certain sense of curiosity held a very powerful sway over me since birth. That curiosity led me to deconstruct nearly everything I could get my small hands on. I fancied myself an inventor of things and worlds, of characters and moments. And because the surroundings in which I grew up were almost dangerously dysfunctional, I spent a good amount of my time alone. During that alone time, I crafted my own special flavor of madness and spent time devising diabolical ways to frighten my younger sister.

Fast forward through junior high.

And then high school came around. It was the 80s and we were given a carte blanche creative license to do and be exactly who we wanted. Our clothing and music reflected an almost overzealous uniqueness…until, out of nowhere, we all looked the same. And so we retooled and reinvented again. We were punk, new wave, glam, prep, and driven by a John Hughesian dystopia. That drive pushed everyone with an artistic bent to explore the landscape of the mind in unheard of ways.

My early years in high school brought the promise of a brilliant career in biology. I was in the upper 1% across the country in the subject. But fate is a fickle mistress and she guided me into a room one day to audition for the Spring musical (“Babes In Arms”). That moment opened up a world that would forever change me. I turned my back on the sciences and embraced the theater arts with every ounce of passion I had.

Fast forward one diploma.

That led to a BS in Theatre/communications and an MFA in acting. During a thirty year career as an actor, I worked on Broadway, in Shakespeare festivals and regional theaters across the country, in film, and television. It wasn’t until I wound up working with one of the most prestigious Theater For Young Audiences in the country, Stage One, that I began writing in earnest. I’d been dabbling with the written word since the late eighties (my first effort, in high school, being a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream that never got off the ground), but it wasn’t until the late nineties that I realized all my actor training could very easily translate into book form. And so, back in 1998, I started writing A Blade Away. Even though I knew horror was the genre I was truly passionate about, I wanted to make sure I had the chops before I dove into the muck and mire of that genre.

Fast forward four books.

It wasn’t until I’d written my fifth book that I woke up one more with a burning question on my mind:

What would it feel like to become a zombie?

I wanted to know the smell, sight, taste, and sounds of the undead transformation. As an artist, the best way to answer that question, was to write a book. And so, I wrote my first horror novel, I Zombie I. That book launched my biggest and most successful series to date (the I Zombie series – not related to the Television show of the same name) and I haven’t stopped.

Fast forward about a gajillion words.

That brings us to now. I’m currently writing my thirtieth book (a cyberpunk thriller called Lament) and am in the middle of a Kindle Scout campaign for my romance novel with an afterlife twist, Suicide Station.