About the author

David Agranoff

Creating stories has always been a passion for David Agranoff. While many of his friends turned rock stars and athletes into their heroes, Agranoff looked up to story tellers. “My heroes were Stephen King, Clive Barker and John Carpenter. Like many others in this field I believed in my heart someday I would make this happen. I had dark tales in my head that to this day are fighting to get out.”

Agranoff took a different path in his young adulthood but it was all for a good cause. Spending the 90’s committed to environmental and animal rights activism taught the author important organizing skills and he remains committed to these causes. During that time Agranoff honed his writing skills while writing several activist journals, booklets and ‘zines. Voicebox, Unveil the Lies and Defense, Rescue and Survival, Agranoff’s non-fiction self-published works, enjoyed international distribution and were translated into eight languages.

In 2001 Agranoff decided the time had come to take writing fiction seriously. His first completed project was the martial arts horror crossover screenplay “Hunting the Moon Tribe”, which was a first-round finalist in the Dimension Films Open Door screenwriting contest in 2002 and then became a quarter finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship contest, the world’s most honored non-professional screenwriting contest.

Agranoff has completed seven spec scripts ranging from straight up horror (Demons of Winter, Hellsville, Home for the Summer, and Purgatory), science fiction- action (Last Warriors of the Earth), and a Vietnam War drama (Don’t Tell).

While developing and marketing his screenplays Agranoff has also turned his grassroots skills towards publishing and co-editing an anthology of horror short stories involving punk rock characters and settings. “We came up with the idea for The Vault of Punk Horror because we didn’t like how punks were depicted in movies and fiction. The project is a benefit for domestic violence shelters in Alaska and has attracted some well- known and talented writers”. The Vault will feature several award-winning and critically- acclaimed writers including John Shirley (screenwriter of The Crow) and Jeremy Robert Johnson (Siren Promised).

Work was delayed in 2005 on The Vault when Agranoff spent eighty days in prison for refusing to testify before a San Diego grand jury. “The grand jury was asking me to give up the names of citizens who attended a lecture by a controversial environmentalist Rod Coronado. Going to a lecture should be protected by the First Amendment – the right to free association and belief. Spending the time in prison was nothing compared to the alternative. If we are to prevent the Bush administration’s push towards fascism it will take many small battles like mine.” Agranoff received a fair amount of media attention (LA weekly, SD City Beat, and the San Diego Union Tribune) and international grassroots support.

Agranoff’s co-editor Gabriel Llanas and friend Paul Stuart have decided to turn PunkHorror into a DIY independent publisher. The first project of PunkHorror was The Gutter Limits by Booger Murphy. Booger Murphy is the pen name for the writing collective of David Agranoff, Cari Beltane, Gabriel Llanas and Paul Stuart. Each author contributed short stories to the collection. The San Diego City Beat said The Gutter Limits was “…consistently atypical and entertaining”. Find The Gutter Limits on www.punkhorror.com

2006 is shaping up to be a busy year for Agranoff, who has just finished a new screenplay (Home for the Summer). He is currently collaborating with artist Rick Clarke on a trilogy of graphic novels based on his spec script Last Warriors of the Earth and will publish a chapbook of four short stories entitled Screams from a Dying World available later this year from PunkHorror.

David Agranoff pays the bills by teaching children with autism. He lives with his wife Cari Beltane, three rabbits and a cat named Asimov. He hopes you will enjoy his fiction and eat lots of vegan food. He highly suggests the fiction of John Shirley and the ice cream of the Chicago Soy Dairy.