Charles L. Grant
Charles L. Grant was an American author born on September 12, 1942, in Hackettstown, New Jersey. Initially pursuing a path toward the Episcopal priesthood at Trinity College, he shifted his focus to English and history, graduating in 1964. Following a brief career as a high school teacher, Grant served in the U.S. Army's Military Police during the Vietnam War. He began his writing career in 1968, initially struggling with novels until he gained recognition for his horror fiction.
Grant is particularly known for his work set in the fictional town of Oxrun Station, where he combined elements of horror and Gothic romance. His narratives often explored themes of supernatural adolescent angst and included notable titles such as "The Hour of the Oxrun Dead" and "The Bloodwind." Throughout his career, he also wrote under several pseudonyms and contributed significantly as an editor, influencing a new generation of horror writers. Despite facing health challenges later in life, his contributions to the horror genre remain impactful and respected.
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Charles L. Grant
Inventor
- Born: September 12, 1942
- Birthplace: Hackettstown, New Jersey
Biography
Charles L. Grant was born on September 12, 1942, in Hackettstown, New Jersey; he was the elder of the two sons of the Reverend Sidney Grant and Minerva Grant (née Clark). He entered Trinity College in Connecticut with the intention of following his father into the Episcopal priesthood, but he changed course midway through his college career and graduated with a degree in English and history in 1964. He then returned to New Jersey to take up a career as a high school teacher. He was drafted into the Vietnam War, and he served with the U.S. Army’s Military Police in Qui Nhon from 1968 to 1970. When he completed his tour, he returned to teaching until he was able to make a living as a freelance writer in the late 1970’s. He married Debbie Voss in 1973; they had two children. He later married several more times; his final partner was horror-writer Kathryn Ptacek.
Grant began selling science-fiction stories in 1968 but had little success selling novels until he began a futuristic family saga with The Shadow of Alpha. The series was intended to run for twelve volumes but was dropped after Legion when the fourth novel in the series was rejected. From that point on, Grant concentrated his principal efforts on the horror fiction that had brought him more acclaim, though he also worked on Gothic romances produced as Deborah Lewis and Felicia Andrews. Although he continued to turn out commodified fiction—including a good deal of comic fantasy—under various pseudonyms throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s, his most-significant work of the period was his horror fiction, notably that set in the small town of Oxrun Station.
The earliest novels in the Oxrun Station series, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead and The Last Call of Mourning, were packaged as Gothic romances and featured relatively orthodox cults as antagonists. The horror elements overwhelmed the other aspects of the plots of later books, which became increasingly elaborate. After The Bloodwind, Grant explored the nineteenth century history of the town in the trilogy begun with The Soft Whisper of the Dead. Later works set in Oxrun Station employed the shorter lengths more suitable to horror fiction—in which Grant had always excelled—but organized the stories into sets. In doing so, these books followed a model established in Nightmare Seasons, and they were issued in such volumes as The Orchard, Dialing the Wind, and Black Carousel.
Grant’s early nonseries horror works reexamined various conventional forms—the monster story in The Nestling, the Caribbean zombie story in Night Songs and the haunted house stories as The Tea Party—but he found a new focus in such elaborate accounts of supernaturalized adolescent angst as The Pet, Stunts, and Something Stirs. Grant was also influential as an editor, and his books provided an important starting point for an emerging generation of horror writers.
Grant abandoned pseudonymous work in the mid-1990’s, largely because the work under his own name increasingly took the form of packaged series and tie-in novels. Some of his later novels broke significant ground and made the most of his well-schooled narrative facility, but the energy of his work seemed somewhat depleted. This may have been a reflection of Grant’s health problems: His severe cardiopulmonary disease and emphysema problems grew increasingly serious and resulted in long-term hospitalization in 2004.