Tunku Halim bin Tunku Abdullah (born 1964) is a Malaysian novelist, short story, non-fiction writer and lawyer.
The author's fiction primarily falls within the dark fantasy and horror genre. His novel Vermillion Eye was a study text at the National University of Singapore. [1] By delving into Malay myth, legends and folklore his writing is regarded as "World Gothic". [2] His novel, Last Breath, is seen as taking a step away from the genre into "a mixture of character drama, satire, alternate history and magic realism". [3] His latest novel, A Malaysian Restaurant in London, is more conventional, being a paranormal love story. His collection of tales, Horror Stories, is a significant best-selling book in Malaysia and his latest retrospective collection Scream to the Shadows published by Penguin Random House SEA will expand his readership in Asia and internationally.
The author's recent works focus on Malaysian history for children. This includes History of Malaysia, A Children's Encyclopedia and A Children's History of Malaysia. He is also a weight-loss advocate and has written books on the subject. He has also written on real estate in Malaysia including Condominiums - Purchase, Investment and Habitat.
Tunku Halim qualified as a barrister in the United Kingdom after having obtained his law degree He has been called to the bar in the High Court of Malaya and as a solicitor in New South Wales. He holds a Master of Science degree in Shipping, Trade and Finance (Distinction) from the City University Business School in London.
He practised corporate and conveyancing law at Shearn Delamore in Kuala Lumpur before working for Merit Management Sdn Bhd, the property developer responsible for Tiara Damansara in section 17, Petaling Jaya. He later moved to Sydney and took up a position as Legal Counsel to Oracle Corporation Australia. After a decade in Sydney, he relocated to Hobart, Tasmania where he self-published his encyclopedia. He is currently no longer a resident of Australia. His mid-career retrospective collection of short stories entitled Horror Stories became "the best-selling Malaysian English fiction books of all times". The 20th anniversary edition of his debut novel, Dark Demon Rising, has recently been published.
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels. The first work to call itself Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, later subtitled "A Gothic Story". Subsequent 18th century contributors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford and Matthew Lewis. The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century, works by the Romantic poets, and novelists such as Mary Shelley, Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works. The early Victorian period continued the use of gothic, in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, as well as works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Later prominent works were Dracula by Bram Stoker, Richard Marsh's The Beetle and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Twentieth-century contributors include Daphne du Maurier, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice and Toni Morrison.
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Horror is often divided into the psychological horror and supernatural horror sub-genres. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society. Prevalent elements include ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, the Devil, witches, monsters, extraterrestrials, dystopian and post-apocalyptic worlds, serial killers, cannibalism, psychopaths, cults, dark magic, satanism, the macabre, gore and torture.
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been filmed.
John Shirley is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, Wyatt in Wichita, and one non-fiction book, Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas. Shirley has written novels, short stories, TV scripts and screenplays—including The Crow—and has published over 84 books including 10 short-story collections. As a musician, Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others.
The Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for "superior achievement" in horror writing for non-fiction.
Charles Lewis Grant was an American novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror". He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.
Christopher Fowler is an English thriller writer. While working in the British film industry he became the author of fifty novels and short-story collections, including the Bryant & May mysteries, which record the adventures of two Golden Age detectives in modern-day London. His awards include the 2015 CWA Dagger in the Library, The Last Laugh Award (twice) and the British Fantasy Award, the Edge Hill Prize and the inaugural Green Carnation Award. His other works include screenplays, video games, graphic novels, audio and stage plays. He was born in Greenwich, London. He lives in Barcelona and King's Cross, London.
Stephen Dedman is an Australian author of dark fantasy and science fiction stories and novels.
Ray Russell was an American editor and writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. Russell is best known for his horror fiction, although he also wrote mystery and science fiction stories.
LGBT themes in horror fiction refers to sexuality in horror fiction that can often focus on LGBTQ+ characters and themes within various forms of media. It may deal with characters who are coded as or who are openly LGBTQ+, or it may deal with themes or plots that are specific to gender and sexual minorities. Depending on when it was made, it may contain open statements of gender variance, sexuality, same-sex sexual imagery, same-sex love or affection or simply a sensibility that has special meaning to LGBTQ+ people.
Dean Francis Alfar, is a Filipino playwright, novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His plays have been performed in venues across the country, while his articles and fiction have been published both in his native Philippines and abroad, such as in Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the Exotic Gothic series.
Lucy Taylor is an American horror novel writer. Her novel, The Safety of Unknown Cities was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel and the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel in 1995, and the Deathrealm Award for Best Novel in 1996. Her collection The Flesh Artist was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 1994.
David Wellington is an American writer of horror fiction, best known for his Zombie trilogy. He also writes science fiction as D. Nolan Clark.
Terence William (Terry) Dowling, is an Australian writer and journalist. He writes primarily speculative fiction though he considers himself an "imagier" – one who imagines, a term which liberates his writing from the constraints of specific genres. He has been called "among the best-loved local writers and most-awarded in and out of Australia, a writer who stubbornly hews his own path ."
Robert Maxwell Hood is an Australian writer and editor recognised as one of Australia's leading horror writers, although his work frequently crosses genre boundaries into science fiction, fantasy and crime.
The Australian Shadows Awards are annual literary awards established by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) in 2005 to honour the best published works of horror fiction written or edited by an Australian/New Zealand/Oceania resident in the previous calendar year.
Rick Hautala was an American speculative fiction and horror writer. He graduated from the University of Maine in 1974 where he received a Master of Art in English Literature. Rick arrived on the horror scene in 1980 with many of his early novels published by Zebra books. He has written and published over 90 novels and short stories since the early 1980s. Many of his books have been translated to other languages and sold internationally. Cold Whisper, published in October, 1991 by Zebra Books, Inc. was also published in Finnish as Haamu by Werner Söderström, Helsinki, Finland, in August, 1994. Toward the end of his life, many of his works were published with specialty press and small press publishers like Cemetery Dance Publications and Dark Harvest. His novel The Wildman (2008), was chosen to be Full Moon Press' debut limited edition title.
Anil Menon is an Indian writer of speculative fiction, as well as a computer scientist with a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, who has authored research papers and edited books on Evolutionary Algorithms. His research addressed the mathematical foundations of replicator systems, majorization, and reconstruction of probabilistic databases, in collaboration with professors Kishan Mehrotra, Chilukuri Mohan, and Sanjay Ranka. After working for several years as a computer scientist, he started to write fiction. His short stories and reviews have appeared in the anthology series Exotic Gothic, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Chiaroscuro, Sybil's Garage, Apex Digest, and others.
Exotic Gothic is an anthology series of original short fiction and novel excerpts in the gothic, horror and fantasy genres. A recipient of the World Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Awards, it is conceptualized and edited by Danel Olson, a professor of English at Lone Star College in Texas.
Johan Anders Höglund is a Swedish academic, postcolonial scholar and cultural critic. He is professor of English Literature at Linnaeus University and former director of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. He received an MA from Brown University, Rhode Island in 1994, and a PhD from Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1997. He is best known for his work on the relationship between American gothic narratives and the long history of US imperialism, and on the Military First-Person Shooter. He has also written about Climate Fiction, Critical Food Studies, Animal Horror Cinema, Nordic Gothic, British Invasion literature before WWI, and on the turn-of-the-century British author Richard Marsh. He has cooperated with Gothic scholar Justin D. Edwards and Indian writer and scholar Tabish Khair. He currently lives in Kalmar, Sweden.