R. Michael Burns is an October child with a background in philosophy, theater and other occult arts. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Florida Horror Writers, the Colorado Springs Fiction Writers Group, and the Gainesville Fiction Writers Group.His fiction has been featured in such varied magazines as the City Slab, Dark Recesses, Shroud, Andromeda Spaceways, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly as well as such anthologies as Extremes 5; Bell, Book & Beyond; Goodbye, Darwin; Cthulhu Express; Bound for Evil; Horror Library Volume III, Made You Flinch! and An Uncommon Collection. His story "The River Child" placed 4th in Writer's Digest's 75th Annual Writing Contest (in the genre fiction category), and his article "Creative Writing 301" was picked in a Predators and Editors poll as the second-best non-fiction article of 2006.His first novel, Windwalkers, was published in August, 2012, by Evil Jester Press.A Colorado native, he lived for three years in Fukaya, Saitama, Japan, and for a year and a half in Moriya, Ibaraki, Japan, where he taught English to Japanese students from 1 to 70. He currently resides in the dark swamps of Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches high school English.