| Author of Anno Dracula and its sequels, as well as several other novels and many short stories.
Kim Newman was born in London, England, in 1959, and grew up in Somerset. For those of you who have read Jago, the fictional town of Alder in Somerset is not based on the actual town of Alder; the real town is a much nicer place to live. Newman has said he was a "weird kid, became psycho teenager, grew up into maladjusted adult." He was educated at the University of Sussex where he studied English. By 1980 he had moved back to London and began his career first in the theatre and caberet circles.
He wrote (and co-wrote), acted in, and helped produce several as yet unpublished plays with the Sheep Worrying Theatre Group, at the Arts Centre in Bridgewater. At this time Newman also played the kazoo in a cabaret band, Club Whoopee. Summing up this experience he said: "It was wretched" - this is what happens when one hangs around with the likes of Neil Gaiman.
Since theatre was not the most reliable of ways to gain a steady income, Newman began working in several other arenas: freelance film and book criticism, as well as the odd spot of editorial work. And apart from all of that he was also writing short stories, which did get published, and several non-fiction books. Somewhere along the way he got involved in broadcasting and, in addition to working on a couple of screenplays, has appeared in several TV shows.
Thanks to the official Kim Newman web site http://indigo.ie/~imago/newman.html for the biographical details | 
