My writing influences include Stephen King, Anne Rice, Charles Grant, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Wilson Rawls.

I won the Society of Professional Journalists first place Mark of Excellence award for column writing in Region 8 in 1998 and 1999, plus a second-place for feature writing in 1999. I also have a couple of state chapter SPJ awards. In 2000, I won Short, Scary Tales' Best Fiction contest for my story "Reunion." In 2001 I won third place for historical romance novel and an honorable mention for short-short fiction from the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc.

I'm enrolled as a graduate student in the liberal studies program at the University of Oklahoma. This is a self-designed program and I am using it to research and write my new novel, AMARA'S PRAYER. My story "Particles" is up at Infernal. I'll have a new story, "Warren Pepper's Victory Choir," at 1000 Delights soon. The how-to-write piece, "Originality in Genre Fiction," is still available in ByLine for July/August.

Steven E. Wedel
My personal Web site.

Short, Scary Tales
Go here and read "Reunion," then let me know what you think of it.

Infernal, the e-zine of sinister writing
This is where you can read "Particles" and a bunch of other great fiction and non-fiction. You will have to pay a subscription rate, but it's cheap.