J.R. Blanes was born in a small town in northern Indiana. It was at the innocent age of six-years old that he saw his first horror film, the Universal Monster movie, The Wolfman (1941). The scene of Larry Talbot’s transformation changed the young boy forever. In that moment, somewhere deep inside him, a monster of his own began to take root. A monster obsessed with the macabre. From that point forward, J.R. watched all the Universal Monster films and soon became an avid fan of The Son of Svengoolie Show, spending his Saturday afternoons squatting inches from the television, indulging in blood drenched B-rated horror films.

A few years after, his fifth grade elementary teacher introduced J.R. to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.” The story of one man’s madness and descent into murder both frightened and fascinated the young J.R. He wondered how a person could suddenly lose their sanity. What would cause them to split from reality? It was these dark thoughts that drove J.R. to seek explanations from the stories of Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson while locked away in his bedroom at his parents’ rural home, where bats flapped overhead from the abandoned burned down house next door, geese hissed at the snakes crawling through the yard, and the babbling man–as J.R. thought of him then–strolled through the neighborhood, a victim of a horrible accident involving an oven.

There was one particular author who eventually pushed J.R. off his own ledge of sanity. That author was Clive Barker.

When he was ten-years old, J.R. saw a copy of the Books of Blood vol. 5: In the Flesh on the kitchen table at his friend’s house. The cover of an eyeless man chased by a cyclopean creature intrigued J.R. He scanned the first couple pages of the story “The Forbidden” (now known for being the source material for the film Candyman). He’d never read anything like it. He asked his friend’s mom if he could borrow it. She was skeptical and told him he had to get permission from his parents. Thankfully, J.R.’s parents had bigger things to worry. His mom was just glad he was reading; though she would’ve preferred he read Steinbeck than that “dreadful stuff.” Barker’s stories of sex and violence and monsters pushed the boundaries of J.R.’s imagination. He couldn’t believe that someone was allowed to write such horrifying tales. But he was glad they could. Because he loved every blood dripping page.

Not longer after, J.R. started writing his own twisted tales of the macabre. It would take decades of perfecting his magically evil craft by studying the masterful works of writers such as Stephen King, William Browning Spencer, Jonathan Carroll, and Ania Ahlborn, as well as, filmmakers such as Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, and John Carpenter, along with a heavy dose of Tales from the Crypt, that he was able to craft twisted tales from the dark world of his mind.

Now he’s ready to share them with you…