| William Cook |
William Cook lives and writes in New Zealand. His genre-spanning work includes novels, short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His dark psychological thriller and horror fiction include the novel Blood Related and the collections Babylon Fading and Dark Deaths. Other popular titles include the Psychological Horror Stories series and Gaze Into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison.
William Cook is also the editor of the anthology Fresh Fear: Contemporary Horror, featuring authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Jack Dann, Robert Dunbar, JF Gonzalez, Shane Mackenzie, Billie Sue Mosiman, and Charlee Jacob, amongst others.
William's current WIP is a sequel to Blood Related, tentatively titled Blood Trail and should be available by the end of 2026. This work focuses more on Detective Ray Truman, as he struggles with his own demons and his obsessive pursuit of serial killer, Caleb Cunningham.
Member of the the Austrasian Horror Writers Association, SpecFicNZ, & SFFANZ.
Sign up for William Cook's VIP newsletter at https://substack.com/@williamcookdarkfiction
"William Cook tells a gruesome story with a sense of authenticity that makes you question with considerable unease if it really is fiction, after all."
— Graham Masterton, author of The Manitou and Descendant
“This man is simply scary. There is both a clinical thoroughness and
a heartfelt emotional thoroughness to his writing. He manages to shock as well
as empathize, to scare as well as acclimatize, yet beneath it all is a well
read intelligence that demands to be engaged. I loved Blood Related. Ordinarily
I hate serial killer stories, but William Cook won me over. He is a unique and
innovative talent.”
— Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker
Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Dog Days
"William Cook
is a dark author of terror and a master of the close up scene of realistic
crime and acts of horror. There are a handful of new names in the horror field
who cause a visceral reaction in the reader and Cook is one of them. He has his
hand on the pulse of the macabre."
— Billie Sue Mosiman, author of Wireman
Author Links
Further Endorsements
“William Cook - writer, poet, artist, editor. This talented man has no illusions about the horror that is human nature. His exploration of torture, murder and mayhem combines the scientific precision of a scientist dissecting a specimen with the creative flair of a sculptor working with words. Something tells me that he is just getting started and we’ll be seeing a lot more of his dark crafts in the future.”
— Anna Taborska,
author of For Those Who Dream Monsters,
director of The Rain Has Stopped, Ela,
The Sin, My Uprising, A Fragment of Being
“William Cook is an
uncompromising horror writer. Be prepared to slink down the underbelly of the
world as visions are revealed that can't be unseen. Strong stomachs required
here folks!”
— Rocky Wood,
President of The Horror Writers Association and Stephen King biographer.
“A world-creator
who fuses the psychosis of character with literary poetics, William Cook will
disturb you, enlighten you, and entertain you.”
— Vincenzo Bilof,
author of The Horror Show
“William Cook is an
author to watch.”
— Mark Edward Hall,
author of The Lost Village and The Holocaust Opera
“William Cook is a
damn good writer. His style of writing and how he composes a story is exactly
what horror readership is starving for and why horror movie fans should start
reading him if they don’t already. They don't know what they're missing. His
stories are part Tarantino in their brilliance, Thomas Harris in raw violence,
and utterly William Cook in originality.”
— Nicholas
Grabowsky, author of Halloween IV and
The Everborn
“William Cook creates
madness with the unsettling candor of yanking a hair out all the way to its
root. He gets right to the point with a bloody scalpel edginess and an EEK
Factor attached. I admire his darkness in drawings and savor the same
startlingly macabre imagery in his verse and prose.”
— Lori R. Lopez,
author of An Ill Wind Blows and The Fairy Fly
“William Cook knows
horror from Fiction to Nonfiction, and he has a gift for blending the two
genres seamlessly. You pray his fictional horror is not real, and hope his
nonfiction horror is fiction. No matter what book of Cook's you read, you'll be
hoping and praying. Here is Horror that you revel in with fascination and
repulsion. William Cook has reinvented "Libertine Horror".”
— Anthony Servante,
author of East Los and Killers
and Horror: Ink Black, Blood Red