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Redwood in his much younger days

Steve Redwood was born on a rainy day in Britain a long long time ago. It was still raining twenty-five years later, so he left the country in a huff, a raincoat, and a plane. His life has since been a textbook study of uselessness, large chunks of it frittered away in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. He has avoided serious work by teaching, and marriage by running away - hence the frequent changes of country. He is at present hiding out in Madrid.

With the turn of the century, having lost hair, teeth, and hope, he sought a profession where the lack of these accoutrements is not uncommon, and decided to become a Scribbler.

He authored the two novels Fisher of Devils (Prime Books, nominated for Best Novel 2003 by British Fantasy Society) and Who Needs Cleopatra? ( www.readreverb.com  ), and the selection of short stories The Heisenberg Mutation and Other Transfigurations (D-press, our very own WOW chapbook publisher). He has slunk into various book anthologies, sharing a consulting room with Michael Moorcock, Jeff Vandermeer, and other extremely dubious quacks in the World Fantasy Award runner-up Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases (Pan Macmillan/Bantam), cracking a joke or two with Neil Gaiman, Esther Friesner, and assorted pranksters in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy (Constable/Carroll & Graf), trembling with frightful and/or fleshless creatures in The Blackest Death, Darkness Rising 2005, and Barebone 8, and finally Meeting his Maker in Deathgrip: Exit Laughing. His unquiet spirit will soon be up to no good in Strange Pleasures 5, Until Someone Loses an Eye, and The Literary Bone.  A certain publisher has promised to bring out a book of his short fiction in 2008, but the same publisher has just renewed his passport: we hope there is no connection.

In addition, due to a cold-blooded mixture of bribes, threats, and tearful cover letters, Redwood has managed to get around fifty short stories published in various small press magazines, mainly genre (Talebones, Dream Zone, Enigmatic Tales, Midnight Street, etc.) but also literary (Eureka Literary Magazine, Rhapsoidia, etc.), feminist (Quality Women’s Fiction, under the name of an imaginary sister), and even WoW itself.

Redwood’s two novels are probably the worst-selling books in history, apart from the Pope’s History of My Willy.  When questioned about this, Redwood smiled with a quiet confidence and four teeth (since lost), and said, ‘Well, John Willingson wasn’t recognised at first either.’

We do not know who John Willingson is.

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