Charles L. Close III

Charles L. Close III has been a creative writer since his childhood attempts at Jim Morrison-esque poems. He studied English lit at UCSD, then spent years living in Mexico, attending theater school in Russia, and acting in New York and LA—gathering ideas the whole time. Close wrote a Kerouac-style travel memoir first, fun but self-indulgent.

When Anne Rice passed, he decided life was too short to keep waiting. He started his published novel, The Blood Thief, Vol. 1, while finishing a master's at Johns Hopkins—and came out the other side having written two books and graduating with straight A's and high honors.