Who Am I?

James Melzer received his degree in radio broadcasting in 1997 from Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. After a short stint as a broadcaster he decided to enter the wonderful world of retail management, where he stayed for 13 years before switching to full-time writing.

Melzer has been highly influenced by the likes of Stephen King and Clive Barker, as well as by novels such as The Exorcist, Jaws, Salem’s Lot, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and many, many more.

James began trying his hand at long-fiction in 1999 when he completed his first novel after three months of sitting night-after-night in a coffee shop. Since then he has completed three other novels as well as a few screenplays and short stories.

His interest in web 2.0 springs from discovering podcast fiction early in 2008. Fascinated by the possibilities, James began podcasting his own fiction trilogy, The Zombie Chronicles, in September of ’08. Since then the podcast novel has received over 18,000 subscribers and garnered more than 1.5 million downloads, and won the Dead Letter Award for Best Web Series – Written.

In November of 2008, just two months after beginning, Melzer signed a deal with indie publisher, Permuted Press, which will bring all three novels in the trilogy to print.

In July of 2009, it was announced that Melzer is now part of a co-publishing venture with Permuted Press and the Simon and Schuster imprint, Pocket Books, which will now see his debut print novel come to book stores everywhere in late-2011.

He is also a freelance writer, the creator of Unleashed – an interview-style podcast where he talks to some of the best and creative names in fiction – and a proponent of self-publishing eBooks.

James currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, stepdaughter, and husky.