Gene O’Neill lives in the Napa Valley with his wife, Kay, a retired primary grade teacher at St. Helena Elementary School. They have been married for 40-plus years. Their grown children, Gavin and Kay Dee, live in Oakland and Solana Beach. Gene has two degrees, neither having anything to do with writing (or much of anything else). At one time or another he has been a college basketball player, an amateur boxer, a Marine, carried mail, worked on seismic crews exploring for oil, a Right-of-Way Agent (appraised, acquired, condemned, and managed real property to build the interstate highway system around Sacramento), a contract specialist for AAFES (contracting to bring private services like barbers, cleaners, and beauty parlors onto military bases), and vice president of a small manufacturing plant. Gene describes his employment background as “rich, varied, and colorful.” His brother-in-law, the president of the above manufacturing plant, describes Gene as more of a “disgruntled ne’er-dowell.”
Since surviving the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1979, Gene has seen over 120 of his stories published, perhaps most notably: two in the Twilight Zone Magazine, six in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, two in Pulpsmith, four in Science Fiction Age, three in Cemetery Dance Magazine, and many in specialized publications like Dragon and Starshore, with numerous anthology placements, including Borderlands 5 and Dead End: City Limits. Stories have been reprinted in France, Spain, and Russia. A few of his past stories have garnered Nebula and Stoker recommendations, including “Balance,” a short story Stoker finalist in 2007, and The Confessions Of St. Zach, a Stoker finalist in the long fiction category in 2009. Doc Good’s Traveling Show was a long fiction Stoker finalist in 2010 and Taste Of Tenderloin won that year for Best Collection.
Some of these stories have been collected in Ghost Spirits, Computers & World Machines, The Grand Struggle, and Taste Of Tenderloin, which also garnered a 2009 starred review in Publishers Weekly. Upcoming are two collections in 2011-12: Dance Of The Blue Lady & Other Stories and this title, In Dark Corners. His novels include The Burden Of Indigo, Collected Tales Of The Baja Express, Shadow Of The Dark Angel, Deathflash, Lost Tribe, and the recently completed Not Fade Away. All of these novels and the two forthcoming collections have been/will be released as s/l HBs in 2011 and 2012 along with the Cal Wild trilogy in 2012/13. Also just released are two novellas, Rusting Chickens from Dark Regions Press and Doublejack from Sideshow Press. SSP will also release a Cal Wild chapbook, Chronicles Of The Double Sparrow in 2012 sometime.
Gene writes full time now, currently putting the finishes touches on the Cal Wild trilogy and beginning a new novella, The Blue Heron.
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