AUTHOR OF THE WEEK April 5
Robert Bloch
(Short Stories and Novels: Crime, Horror, Science Fiction Writer)
“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
“Horror is the removal of masks.”
“There’s a great desire to communicate, I think, on the part of all of us. And if we are in situations where the communication is difficult due to difficult circumstances or shyness or an introversion, this is a wonderful outlet. And a direct one.”
Robert Albert Bloch (1917 — 1994) was a prolific American writer. Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories, over twenty novels of crime and science fiction, but was most famous for his horror fiction Psycho.
Bloch was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle, a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career. He received a Hugo Award for That Hell-Bound Train, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. A good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum, Bloch wrote three stories for Star Trek.
Listen to Bloch’s Psycho, an audio preview of the novel (15 minutes):
Interested in the backstory, the inspiration for Psycho? Read it here at Galaxy Press about the Butcher of Plainfield:
“Horror is not about supernatural forces or things that go bump in the night; horror is about the fear we have within, buried deep in our brains.”
Read more at Lit Reactor about Robert Bloch: https://litreactor.com/columns/footnotes-psycho
More at Bloch Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Bloch/e/B001K6Q4QW
Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author every week at Reading Fiction Blog! And browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 200 free short stories by over 100 famous authors.
Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary and classic authors.
Paula Cappa 
That sounds neat. Thanks! I wonder if “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”, was one that had been included in Harlan Ellison’s anthology, Dangerous Visions? There were some Jack the Ripper stories in that one, including one by Robert Bloch but I don’t remember the title.
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I don’t know. But the film of it is really fun from Boris Karloff Thriller Theater:
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Steven, I agree. A memorable writer! I have two of his short stories posted here, Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, and, Enoch. You can find them as free reads under Bloch, Robert in above tab Index of Authors’ Tales.
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Robert Bloch is one of the best and most unique horror authors of the 20th century. He’s one of the authors who brought realism to horror and so put horror in mundane settings.
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