About
Bev Vincent is the author of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences (nominated for a 2023 Locus Award), The Dark Tower Companion, The Road to the Dark Tower (nominated for a Bram Stoker Award), and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award. In 2018, he co-edited the anthology Flight or Fright (a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee) with Stephen King.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Borderlands 5, Ice Cold, and The Blue Religion. Four of his stories were collected in When the Night Comes Down and another four in a CD Select eBook. His story "The Bank Job" won the Al Blanchard Award. "The Honey Trap" from Ice Cold was nominated for an ITW Thriller Award in 2015 and "Zombies on a Plane" was nominated for an Ignotus Award in 2020.
His non-fiction has appeared in diverse magazines, including The Poetry Foundation, Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Screem, Pensacola Magazine and Texas Gardener. He has been a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine since 2001 and is a former member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews. He has served as a judge for the Al Blanchard, Shirley Jackson and Edgar Awards.
His work has been translated into: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, HItalian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian
Author Archives: Bev Vincent
Don’t sell your work short
I see a lot of anthology calls lately where the promise of payment is deferred. Instead of getting an advance or a flat payment up front, contributors are promised an even share of the royalties. You’ll do yourself a huge … Continue reading
Is your social worker in that horse?
A weekend spent un-writing, also known as trimming the fat. My work in progress started its life at 5100 words (well, technically it started with 0 words…) and went down to 4200 and then to 3600 and now to just … Continue reading
Travel agents
I finished the first draft of a story I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. It’s been tough going for a couple of reasons. First, I used the bones of an old, unfinished story as the basis for … Continue reading
Carrie at 40 57
Matthew Craig has devoted most of his blog in April to celebrating the 40th anniversary of the publication of Carrie. He invited me to write one of the entries, along with others like Sarah Langan, John Connolly, Simon Clark and Mark … Continue reading
Olfactory hallucination
I like winning contests. Gives me a boost. The theme for the 2014 AE Micro contest was “senses,” so I wrote a flash story called “Phantosmia,” which was one of the five entries selected for publication in this little do-it-yourself … Continue reading
Good for the goose
I finished reading Ice Cold this weekend. I even re-read my own story. It’s an impressively solid anthology that tackles the Cold War from so many different angles. There’s even a Hemingway “Crook Factory” inspired story and one that was inspired by … Continue reading
They didn’t even name him Mr. Black
I don’t take on new series lightly. In fact, I’ve become somewhat mercenary. In recent days, I deleted Bates Motel and The Walking Dead from my DVR series recordings. However, I’ve been meaning to check out The Blacklist, having heard … Continue reading
Endings are hard
Awoke this morning to news of another short story sale. This one is for a flash fiction piece that was one of the winners of a contest. The official announcement hasn’t been made yet, so I won’t say where until … Continue reading
Everyone sees him through your eyes now
This is about Homeland, season 3. If you haven’t seen it, then you should probably quickly avert your eyes. The theme of the season was redemption: Carrie’s for being right about Brody all along and Brody’s attempt to atone for … Continue reading
The empress of ice cream
I submitted a short story this morning to the Elmore Leonard tribute anthology. I had a good draft finished for a while but had some feedback from a first reader that I needed to consider. I ended up making some … Continue reading