Peter Clines

Clines was raised in Cape Neddick, Maine,^[2] where his love of storytelling was apparent from a very young age. While in third grade, he used his handwriting practice paper to pen his first story, Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth.^[3] Clines continued telling stories as a kid, sometimes using Micronauts and Star Wars figurines to create scenes,^[4] and other times in writing. As a self-professed "comic geek",^[5] Clines created hero characters all through grade school.^[5] He submitted various comic book scripts to Marvel Comics. At age 11, he received his first professional rejection letter from Jim Shooter, the then editor-in-chief at Marvel. Clines describers it as "a very personal, very polite and professional" rejection letter. Being taken seriously as a young writer, first by Shooter and then by Marvel's Tom DeFalco, who also sent an encouraging and helpful rejection letter a few years later, encouraged Clines to continue working on his craft.^[3]

Clines graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1991^[2] with a degree in English Literature. As a student, he worked as a local roadie crew for traveling bands.^[3]

While Clines worked as a props master, his writing turned from props to focus on scripts.^[4] In 2006, after the end of a film project, he dedicated himself to writing full-time. He worked for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, writing interviews, reviews, and articles.^[6] While at Creative Screenwriter, Clines interviewed, among others, George Romero, Frank Darabont, Seth Rogen, Diablo Cody, Sylvester Stallone, and the late Nora Ephron.^[4]

Clines made his first fiction sale, The Hatbox, to online journal The Harrow.^[7] He continued to sell zombie and Lovecraftian short stories to anthologies before he began writing his first published novel, Ex-Heroes, in 2008.^[6]