Meet our authorsMeet our authors
Dan Asfar has a flare for writing lively narrative, evidenced by the strength of his first popular book of history Outlaws and Lawmen of the West: Volume II. He also has written six collections of ghost stories. Dan, who has a degree in history from the University of Alberta, has traveled around North America in pursuit of paranormal folklore. His next ghost-hunting expedition will take him to Australia sometime in 2004.
Julie Burtinshaw loves to read anything she can get her hands on but even more so she?s discovered that she loves to write. Romantic Ghosts, her first book for Ghost House follows two recently published young adult novels, Dead Reckoning and Adrift.
Julie lives an active life as a wife, and mother of two, and works in the film industry. In Romantic Ghost Stories, Julie confronts the question of what happens to us after we die? - a mystery that has intrigued her for as long as she can remember.
Jo-Anne Christensen is the popular author of numerous Ghost House books, including the best-selling Campfire Ghost Stories, Haunted Halloween Stories, Haunted Hotels and Ghost Stories of Christmas. Jo-Anne was raised in small-town Western Canada. She says the somewhat limited local entertainment options - mostly curling and hockey - led to an early love of reading, particularly anything with a paranormal flavor.
Jo-Anne's fascination with the unusual quite naturally led to a ten-year career in radio advertising but, in 1993, she left radio to pursue two equally strong ambitions: a life of freelance writing and the determination to never again write another sixty seconds of hard-sell used-car copy.
As a child, A.S. Mott didn't like to play outside. Born with the nocturnal instincts of a vampire, Mott preferred the dark confines of his parents' basement. There he fed not on the blood of others but on a steady diet of scary movies and the most frightening books he could find. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that this enemy of sunlight would choose to write about the supernatural.
Mott cites among his current influences such writers as Martin Amis, Stephen King and Joss Whedon (creator of the TV cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Mott still can be found spending most of his time in the dark, either watching another cheesy horror movie or working on his latest book.
Vernon Oickle was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia where he lives with his wife and two sons. He has 25 years experience in the weekly newspaper business and has won numerous awards for writing and photography. Today, he is editor of the Bridgewater Bulletin and is the author of seven books including Ghost Stories of the Maritimes and Ghost Stories of the Maritimes Vol. 2. His interest in ghosts and the supernatural can be traced to his childhood when his grandmother told him stories during his visits and through several personal experiences.
Barbara Smith has always been a collector of folklore and in recent years has successfully combined it with her other passion, writing. She is the author of 16 ghost stories books to date, many of them best-sellers. A charismatic public speaker, Barbara is a frequent guest on radio and television. The Toronto-born author has lived for many years in western Canada.
Susan Smitten is an accomplished television producer, editor and news anchor. She was story editor for the second stellar season of the acclaimed series Cinema Secrets on the American Movie Classics network. Smitten has produced and story-edited for Discovery Channel and Life Network and has worked in recent years as a senior producer with Great North and Television Renaissance. In a recent project, she produced, wrote and directed segments of a new television series called Medical Profiles for Discovery Health, including a one-hour special on actress Carrie Fisher and her struggle with bipolar disorder. Now based in Vancouver, Canada, the charismatic Smitten is still seen periodically in front of the camera as a current affairs program host on CBC Television. When not writing for television, she enjoys combining her journalistic training with her personal interest in folklore to craft ghost story collections for Ghost House Books. Smitten is author of Ghost Stories of Oregon and Ghost Stories of New England and is currently collecting and editing several other volumes of ghost stories.
Edrick Thay is the author of almost a dozen books. Born in Edmonton, he holds a degree in English literature from Queen's University in Ontario and a master's degree in journalism from Indiana University. An avid traveler and reader, he currently lives in Toronto.
An avid traveler and reader, he longs one day to write from a loft in New York City. In the meantime, he busies himself with expanding his CD collection, improving his skills in the kitchen and finding inspiration in the works of Lahiri, Chabon and Murakami.
Andrew Warwick, a life-long lover of literature, first became interested in the numinous realm after a harrowing experience in Africa and another first-hand encounter with the supernatural in the deserts of Egypt. Following a trip to the Middle East and an expedition through Southeast Asia by bicycle, Andrew returned home to Canada to continue his studies and began to record some of his experiences of the strange, and mysterious people and stories he encountered.
This book, is the product of those travels and of the tales he gleaned from many a black night in front of a whistling campfire, surrounded by friends, strangers and long, unnatural shadows.
Darren Zenko is a freelance journalist, editor, alternative-radio broadcaster, pop-culture commentator and karaoke host.
A lifelong fascination with the paranormal began as soon as he read Readers Digest's Strange Stories & Amazing Facts and continued through a poorly thought-out attempt to summon the ghost of Elvis in his junior high industrial-arts darkroom. This interest led Darren to join the Ghost House team, where Ghosts of Pets and Animals is his first book-length exploration of the unknown.