Lauren K. Cannon is a fantasy and horror artist. She was born in 1986 and lives in southern New Jersey, on the edge of the Pine Barrens of Jersey Devil lore. She has a BFA but considers herself self-taught, as her college proved to be an expensive waste of time. Working as a freelance illustrator primarily in the publishing industry, she is best known for her work with authors Peter V. Brett and Mira Grant, and for a long tenure contributing to ImagineFX magazine. Lauren’s influences include strange beauty, the brutal elegance of the universe, and creepy dead things.

Carlos Fabián Villa is a professional artist living in Mexico. His work can be found at antiherobrush.com and zano.deviantart.com. First off I’d like to ask you a question in the spirit of Nightmare: What scares you the most? My biggest nightmare — and the most boring answer I can give you — is of course waking up […]

Dennis Carlsson is a tattoo artist born in 1986 in Sweden. He’s been drawing all his life, and is self-taught. After discovering Photoshop, a cheap tablet was bought, and now he mainly paints digitally. He never thought that art would be his livelihood, but today he runs his own tattoo studio, DC Tattoo, outside of Borås, Sweden.

Okan Bülbül was born in Turkey in 1979. Since childhood, he has loved drawing and painting. He was encouraged by his teachers to attend an art school, but because he was also good at science his parents convinced him that being an engineer would make a better career. He attended a science high school before entering Middle East Technical University’s Mechanical Engineering department and subsequently transferring to the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering.

Vitaly Alexius was born in 1984, in Novokuznetsk, Siberian Russia. On April 11, 1997, fate threw him an unexpected twist by means of aerial transportation; he relocated approximately 5,555 miles to Toronto, Canada. Since 2000, he’s been tutoring students in drawing and painting, and in 2002 he learned Photoshop and has been using it ever since. He currently works as an Art Director, creating weekly episodes for the “Romantically Apocalyptic” graphic novel and traveling way too much.

Dariusz Zawadzki was born in Poland in 1958. Since childhood, he has built surreal worlds in his imagination. At eleven he started painting and has never looked back. Growing up, he wanted to attend an artistic secondary school, but was told his eyesight was too poor. Refusing to let others stymie his artistic development, Dariusz taught himself the ins and outs of painting, and developed his own techniques.

Robert Emerson is a self-taught artist. Born in 1959, he worked in the traditional mediums of oils, water colors, pastels, pencils, pens and inks, until a broken blood vein in his brain left him without the use of his right arm. Having lost the precision of his dominant hand, he discovered photo compositing as an alternate means of artistic expression. Through trial and error, reading, and watching countless Youtube “how to” videos, Robert slowly began to learn the art of photo manipulation.

Comics are what first drew me to art. They were that first peek in to what was possible. When I was younger I was really into superhero comics, but that’s changed a bit over the years. Though I’m still and always will be a fan of work like Batman and Hellboy, I’ve been flipping through stranger stuff lately. A lot of work by French and Italian comic artists from the ’80s, for example. Doesn’t matter if the dialog is in English or not; I can look at those pages for days on end.

Tran Nguyen is a Georgia-based gallery artist and freelance illustrator. Born in Vietnam and raised in the States, she is fascinated with creating visuals that can be used as a psycho-therapeutic support vehicle, exploring the mind’s landscape. Her paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using colored pencil and acrylic on paper. Nguyen has worked for clients such as Playboy, Tor, McDonald’s, Chateau St. Michelle Winery, and has showcased with galleries in California, New York, Spain, and Italy.

I wrote an entire novel on dear old Krampus … Hard not to love a figure that revels in putting naughty children in a sack and beating the snot out of them. In addition to his child minding, I enjoy his long history that extends far back to pagan times, long before Saint Nicholas came along and stole the holiday season from him. I love the idea of Krampus returning to reclaim Christmas, which is probably why it’s the premise of my novel.