Gary Brandner

Gary Brandner was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in 1930. As one of the sons of a forest ranger, his early education was in a variety of schools across the country. It took two decades for the family to settle in Bellingham, WA. There Gary became a member of Phi Sigma Kappa, earned a degree in journalism, served in the Coast Guard (after lying about his age), and took a correspondence course at Northwest Radio and TV school, which led to a job writing scripts for live TV in Oregon. Later, Gary married and divorced his first wife, moved to L.A. to escape the dreary daily drizzle of the northwest and had a career as an advertising copywriter, then as a tech writer. He also learned to play folk guitar to complete his quasi-Beatnik persona.A few years later, Gary Brandner became a freelance fiction writer; his short stories appeared periodically in detective and mystery magazines. In 1976, he wrote the outline for The Howling; a year later when it was published, Gary Brandner was established as a horror writer.Gary said no one reads bios. He'd always insert a line or two about his shark fighting at the Great Coral Reef and his stint to help put out oil fires in Kuwait. No one ever asked, "Hey, Gary, did you really do that?"Eventually, he would write over 250 short stories, 30 novels, a novella and several screenplays. Eventually, he would marry again, divorce again, marry again. In 2011 he and his wife, Martine, moved to Reno, NV. He died in 2013 of esophageal cancer.