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Read Me A NightmareThe best PAYING NO-FEE open submission short story call list, plus FREE FICTION. Sundays: Market Information & Lists. Wednesdays: The Chronicles of Roxie Vega. Fridays: Free Reprint Fiction and why it sold! Author: Angelique Fawns
"Read Me A Nightmare" brings strange short stories to life. A fan of Twilight Zone? Tales from the Crypt? Mixing genres, these tales come from the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and comedy. A writer yourself? Stay tuned after the readings for interviews with editors, publishers, voice actors and other interesting folks in the industry. Visit www.fawns.ca to learn more. Please --if you enjoy the episode, leave a review! angeliquemfawns.substack.com Language: en Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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54 To Be More Like Them & Edo van Belkom
Friday, 14 November, 2025
Edo van Belkom shares his original YA horror story, followed by a candid and entertaining chat. They picked on the wrong kid… It’s not her face that’s scary. Plus, learn how Edo drove (literally) to writing success and a full-time career. And… why he chooses to hold down another job. We start this episode with a reading of “To Be More Like Them” performed by Karen Shute, one of our voice actor regulars. This short can be found in Death Drives A Semi.Then Edo van Belkom regals us with career anecdotes and writing advice. Edo’s first short story was reprinted in Year’s Best Horror Stories 20, launching a career that has produced over 200 stories and won both Bram Stoker and Aurora awards. He’s written more than a dozen novels including SCREAM QUEEN, BLOOD ROAD, MARTYRS and TEETH, plus a 15-year serial for Truck News Magazine following Mark Dalton, a former detective turned truck driver. His work spans horror, action-adventure novels for Harlequin’s Deathlands series, erotica, and three books on writing craft (Writing Horror, Writing Erotica, and Northern Dreamers). His Silver Birch Award-winning YA novel WOLF PACK inspired the 2023 Paramount+ series created by Jeff Davis and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.Find Edo at https://www.facebook.com/edo.vanbelkomPack a lunch, climb on the school bus, and hang on tight. It’s time for a ride…If you enjoy these interviews, help me keep making them! Join the next tier. Kind of like one Starbuck’s coffee a month.AF: Listeners just heard your story “To Be More Like Them,” which is creepy and disturbing. Can you tell me the inspiration behind it?EVB: I convinced the publishers of the Wolf Pack books to let me do anthologies for young adults. The first one was Be Afraid, and my whole idea was to have teenage problem stories with a horror bent. I had no experience doing YA back then—my job was to sell books and get work, so I bullshitted all the time about my experience and abilities. I put out the call for problem stories with a fantastic twist, and I had to write one myself. At the time I was working part-time as a school bus driver. I’d go out in the morning for an hour and a half, then have a six-hour block in the middle of the day to write, then do the run at the end of the day. It was a great job—stress-free because when you parked the bus at the end of the day, you didn’t have to worry about that job anymore until the next day.AF: And the school bus kids inspired the story?EVB: When I was driving the school bus with these private school kids—who were supposed to be better and everything—they were absolutely vicious. If anyone showed a sign of weakness, they jumped on that person in a group. That’s all in the story, that whole experience. There’s nothing more cruel than a bunch of kids finding the weak one in the pack and just tearing them to shreds. The ending, which I’m very proud of, came from reading a similar ending somewhere. I often do that—I read a lot of stories and think, “Ah, that’s how you end this kind of story.” I said I didn’t know anything about young adult books, but that book was a Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year finalist and also won a Children’s Book Center Our Choice Award.AF: So this story was truly the inspiration for Wolf Pack?EVB: I have to give credit to my wife, who at the time was working as a children’s librarian. She was always saying I should do young adult. The adult career kind of stalled with my mass market paperbacks Scream Queen and Blood Road—whether they didn’t make it into stores or wasn’t the right time, sales decided maybe it wasn’t for me. So I moved on to young adult. The idea stemmed from Be Afraid—what if a forest ranger finds wolf cubs after a fire and brings them home, but realizes they’re werewolves, part human? I pitched it over the phone to the editor at Tundra Books, Kathy Lowinger, and she said it sounded great.AF: And it won the Silver Birch Award?EVB: It won the Silver Birch Award, which is voted on by elementary school children in grades four and five. There’s a list of ten books, and kids have to read a certain number before they can vote. To be on the list, you have to have 5,000 copies in print, so it went into a second printing immediately, and by the end of the year it had a third printing because all the schools in Ontario participating in the program had to buy a copy. I won by a landslide because I didn’t lose any of the girls, but all the boys loved it since it was an action adventure. One of my best experiences ever was at the award ceremony by the Lakeshore with thousands of kids bused in from all over. They’re all screaming, holding up your book like it’s a rock concert. I walked out on stage with a werewolf mask, tore it off, and they’re just screaming and cheering.AF: Amazing. For authors in the trenches looking at how they want their career to look, this is what success looks like.EVB: It’s easy to say I made it, but I ended up taking a regular job because things didn’t fall into place as nicely as they could have. Wolf Pack was made into a TV show twenty years after the book was published. If the TV series had happened at the time, I would’ve continued on with that boost, but it came twenty years later. I had certain goals—I wanted to be in mass market paperback, which I did several times. I wanted to be in a major magazine—the best I did was Cemetery Dance, the top magazine for horror at the time. I did premier anthologies like Year’s Best Horror Stories with my first published story, and Best American Erotica 1999. The hard part is being consistent and working all the time. I did twelve years full-time.AF: You were a full-time writer for twelve years?EVB: My wife and I had an agreement that it would be five years, but that just rolled past. My last full-time year as a writer, I made something like $40,000, which was respectable, especially for a Canadian writer. But I was doing everything—teaching night school courses, writing articles, writing trivia questions. It was a real grind. There’s a saying in artistry: it’s okay for me to suffer for my art, but it’s not okay for everyone around me to suffer for my art. So I decided to take a job and kept writing part-time.AF: Tell me about your serial in Truck News Magazine.EVB: I did a serial story about a trucker detective, Mark Dalton: Owner Operator, that ran for fifteen years in Truck News Magazine—fifty-five stories total. One chapter every month, so three stories per year. It paid very well—I got professional rates, eventually a standard $350 a month, then bumped up to $400. That’s almost a payment on something. Then they asked me to do a graphic story arc with a new truck driver immigrant to Canada, which lasted three years. At one point I was making $800 a month on that, which is pretty good for writers.AF: How did that gig start?EVB: When my first short story collection Death Drives a Semi came out, I was always looking for places to promote my work. I found Truck News Magazine at a truck stop and thought maybe I could send them a press release. I looked through the staff box and saw the editor was John G. Smith—I wondered if he was the guy who worked at the Brampton Times when I was working there as a daily newspaper reporter. Turns out it was. I gave him a copy of the book—there were three stories in it about truck driving. At first he said they could reprint one or two, but then said the stories weren’t really trucking industry positive, since the trucks go crazy and people die. I suggested writing something specifically for them—a former private detective who takes his truck on the road and can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. The first year or two I’d go in and we’d discuss the next story, but after a while it was just whatever I wanted to do.AF: What made you the most money over your career?EVB: Without a doubt, the Wolf Pack series deal with Paramount Plus was by far the biggest. But over the course of ten or fifteen years, the truck driving serial was the best steady income. Then there were the mass market men’s magazine stories—I did fifty-five of those, too. I started at $250 US and could write them fairly quickly. Those checks were important early on. After a while, it became a grind—you can only explain sexual positions so many different ways. I used the name Evan Hollander for those because I wanted the focus to be on the real stuff or the good stuff.AF: You also did the Deathlands books for Harlequin?EVB: I did two Deathlands books for Harlequin Gold Eagle. They wanted 90,000 words, so I decided to write a thousand words a day for ninety days. My favorite anecdote is from Joel Lansdale—someone at a convention asked him how to write a novel, and he said, “You sit down in a chair in front of a typewriter, and you don’t stop typing until you finish the book.” That’s it. We had a family cottage then, and I’d take my son up there. I’d sit in the kitchen and do a thousand words, then we could go do whatever we want.AF: What are you working on now?EVB: I wrote four stories this year and sold two. One of the guys who took a story from me is saying they’re doing a novel line and asked if I’d be interested in contributing, which is great. I’ve got a year and a half or so to retirement, and I’m trying to ramp this up again. It reminds me of the pressure I was under when writing full-time—there’s an opportunity, so I’ve got to spend my waking hours thinking of something substantial.AF: What’s your day job now?EVB: For the last twenty years, I’ve been a prisoner escort officer with Peel Regional Police. I work at a courthouse in Brampton—we transport prisoners from the jail to the courthouse, from the cells in the basement up to the courtrooms. I drive a truck, so you could say I’m still a truck driver.Ths content is free! Please share with other horror fans and writers.AF: So what are our takeaways? Always have a day job or consistent source of income?EVB: Yes. Even when you’re successful, it’s so helpful to have a constant paycheck. And you try many different angles—sometimes you get the constant gig like the truck gig, which was phenomenal.AF: Where can people find you?EVB: Facebook—your granddad’s social media. https://www.facebook.com/edo.vanbelkomI post fairly regularly. I’m also on Instagram, X, and Threads. Just type in Edo Van Belkom on any social media platform. I have a bunch of videos on YouTube—some talk about Wolf Pack.https://www.youtube.com/@edovanbelkom9304 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
