Meet Paul
Paul F. Olson wrote his first “novel” when he was in second grade. The epic work told the story of a gang of talking raccoons. Hand-printed on lined notebook paper, it ran nearly a page-and-a-half and included original artwork, in crayon, of the main characters carrying some undetermined item (a slab of sheet metal, perhaps?) out of the local dump. It was far from an auspicious beginning, but it was a beginning nevertheless. From that day on, Olson wrote more or less non-stop, churning out stories, poems, plays and assorted other bits of nonsense – a practice that continues today, forty-some years later.
Growing up on Mackinac Island, Michigan, Olson took advantage of every extracurricular activity available at his tiny high school. The rather limited options included a school paper, which he edited for three years. At the same time, his creative writing ambitions were growing, and he began trying to sell some of his short stories, without success. During his senior year he wrote the first draft of a 480-page horror novel which taught him a little bit about the craft of storytelling, a lot about what not to do, and best of all, still makes a fine doorstop to this very day.
In his early twenties he finally made his first sale, when David B. Silva purchased the short story “The Visitor” for The Horror Show, a magazine that, like Olson’s career, was still in its infancy. Over the next few months the two men struck up a friendship, which led to many letters, huge long-distance phone bills, several trips to World Fantasy Conventions and many other fine and thrilling adventures.
During this time, Olson moved from northern Michigan to Chicago, where he managed B. Dalton bookstores for a few years before striking out as a full-time freelancer. From 1987 to 1989 he published a non-fiction trade magazine called Horrorstruck: The World of Dark Fantasy, designed for horror fans, writers, editors, artists and other professionals. The bimonthly publication grew quickly and was nominated for several major awards, including the British Fantasy Award.
While Olson was producing Horrorstruck, other things were happening at a rapid pace, including the publication of more short stories, the sale of the Olson-Silva ghost story anthology Post Mortem to St. Martin’s Press, and the sale of Olson’s vampire novel Night Prophets to New American Library. Something had to give, and Olson reluctantly decided to fold the magazine to put more effort into his writing.
Over the next few years the anthology and novel were published and a second Olson-Silva anthology, Dead End: City Limits, appeared from St. Martin’s. It was around that time that the “horror bubble” began to burst and the economics of publishing started to change. In short, things were getting tougher for new and midlist writers of every stripe – and really tough for those trying to build careers in horror. The fiscal realities forced Olson to abandon his full-time writing career and head back into the bland workaday world. Living in the suburbs of Chicago at the time, he was fortunate to land a marketing job at a performing arts center, allowing him to keep his hand in writing and other creative endeavors, while simultaneously indulging his love of live theater.
In the mid-1990s Olson was able to fulfill his longtime dream of returning to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and finally found a way to put all that high school journalism experience to work, when he took the job of editor at the Pioneer-Tribune, a weekly newspaper in the small town of Manistique. After two years he was lured away to become news director at the local AM radio station, but eventually returned to the Pioneer-Tribune, where he remains to this day.
After several years of working independently, Olson and Silva teamed up once again in 1997, when they launched Hellnotes, a weekly newsletter for horror fans and professionals. Initially distributed in three formats – e-mail, fax, and a hardcopy print edition – the newsletter was eventually transformed into an e-mail-only publication. Olson contributed many news items and other blurbs to Hellnotes, although his major contributions were the weekly editorials, which could best be described as “eclectic,” covering a wide range of topics related to horror, publishing, writing, and creativity in general. After five years, exhaustion led Olson and Silva to turn the newsletter over to new management. Under the leadership of Judi Rohrig, Hellnotes continued to thrive until 2006, when it amazingly found its way back home to Dave, where it underwent yet another metamorphosis, this time becoming a news blog, which is now updated around the clock.
Olson still lives in Manistique with Erin, his wife of 27 years. With their twin daughters far away at college, they are left to share their house with thousands of books, four or five computers, a set of very loud bagpipes and a friendly cat.