Ronald E. Wright
Author
Ronald E. Wright was born and raised in Trenton, Missouri, a town of 7000 about 100 miles northeast of Kansas City.
At about the age of eight, he discovered the wonderful world of fossil hunting and paleontology, and that in turn set him on the road to a degree in geology from Kansas State University in 1976. Ron goes on to say that it was no wonder, with his passion for things ancient, that he should stumble onto the eldritch world of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Ironically, Ron didn’t discover HPL’s Mythos until about 1997, when he found some paperbacks in Tyler, Texas, where he was working at the time. Ironically, one of the books he read was named “The Lurker at the Threshold,” a “posthumous collaboration” by August Derleth in the Lovecraft tradition.
While reading the book, Ron thought it reminded him of a movie he saw back in 1971 named “The Dunwich Horror.” Ron goes on to say, “Small world, isn’t it?” He never knew that Lovecraft was the source of the movie, only that he liked it. But after reading “Lurker,” he went back to the store and bought every title he could grab.
A year later in Lawrence, Kansas, he bought an Arkham House copy of “The Dunwich Horror and Others” for about $12.00, coming full circle. “What a thrill it was reading ‘The Dunwich Horror’ for the first time,” Ron says. “I’d give anything to see Hollywood cut loose on ‘Dunwich,’ ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ (rumor has it there’s hope for this), ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’ and ‘The case of Charles Dexter Ward.’ Yes, some of them have been done. But those efforts are but shadows of shadows of what could be, if Hollywood really got serious about them.”
Ultimately Ron owes his passion for horror to one of the finest collection of horror short stories he ever discovered, titled “Monster Mix.” Published by Dell back in the late ’60s, it introduced Ron to such chillers as Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo,”“The Mannikin” by Robert Bloch, “The Derelict” by William Hope Hodgson, “Fire in the Galley Stove” by William Outerson, and many more. “Blackwood’s ‘The Wendigo’ is writing as it was meant to be,” says Ron—a superb job of scaring the reader pootless not with what is revealed, but what is hinted at.”
Ron took up the pen in 1998, and has been writing horror short stories since.
He makes his professional living as a petrophysicist in the oil and gas industry, analyzing oil and gas well data, e-commuting from his home in Lake Jackson, Texas (about 25 miles west of Galveston). He loves fossil collecting all over Texas and the midwest.
He and his wife Cindy share their two story Mediterranean home with four cats, occasional pet ducks, a “plethora” of stuffed moose, and a horde of books.
“It’s fun scaring the hell out of people with a good story from time to time,” Ron says. He hopes you read a tale or two of his, and agree. |
