I love storytelling. I am obsessed with it and have dedicated my life to becoming a professional, a master in the world’s oldest craft. Horror, contemporary fantasy, and sci-fi are genres that have spoken to me since I was a child. Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and even R.L. Stein are the authors that infected me with the craft since I was a boy. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, and Max Brooks influenced me as an adult.

I always loved storytelling and writing but was never encouraged to pursue it until my senior year at the University of West Florida when my psychology professor told me that I got a 98% on a report I wrote. The reason it wasn’t a 100 was that “My grammar needs work,” but he told me that I was a gifted writer. My paper wasn’t boring to read, and I was engaging and entertaining to him through my words.

It wasn’t until I was a police officer in Savannah, Georgia that I started to focus on writing. My sergeants would complement me on my vivid and detailed reports, especially the ones for heinous and sinister crimes that were needed for important trials. My best friend, Joe Leone, also encouraged me to write. Although, the first book I wrote I willfully disown, because it was a terrible attempt at comedy. But my craft was used at a defining and traumatic moment in my life when I became a whistleblower and pulled a Jerry Maguire by mass emailing the entire department about the corruption taking place within it.

I later traveled with my job as a security officer for Disney Cruise Lines. I had the wonderful opportunity to visit different countries and become friends with people from across the world. These experiences afforded me the time to write and self-publish “At the End of All Things.” Trust me, working behind the scenes for Disney gives you some good inspiration for horror.

After a few lost years, I landed a job with Tesla. During that time, I went through an existential crisis and questioned my purpose in life. Something within pushed me back to writing. I tried to get “The Malediction of Llewyn Glass” published, but I received around 200 rejections from agents and publishers. Knowing that they were wrong, I had the books edited and printed and sold them on my own at art markets, festivals, and bars with a promotion called “Buy a Book, Get a Free Shot.” Fortunately, I was able to gain fans and press exposure by taking my art into my own hands.

Then the pandemic happened, and I was laid off from Tesla (I was two weeks away from my stocks being vested). I realized that I no longer wanted to be a dispensable cog in a company; I wanted to commit my life to the pursuit of storytelling, to go all the way with it. I’ve spent the past few years living paycheck to paycheck, sale to sale, novel to novel, in the hopes that I will one day not only live off my art but write stories that will resonate, thrill, and blow people’s minds.

As of 2024, I currently work as a Private Investigator for Best Private Investigations: Jacksonville Branch.

-Frank Reteguiz

“I do not fear the unknown, for she has always been kind to me.”

American Gods and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Outsider and The Dark Half by Stephen King

World War Z by Max Brooks

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Taking by Dean Koontz

I also love Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and Dan Brown’s Dr. Robert Langdon Series.

The Thing

The Exorcist

Sleepy Hollow

Aliens

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Re-Animator

The Shining

Poltergeist

Bone Tomahawk

The Evil Dead series