About Lee Clark Zumpe
Lee Clark Zumpe’s nights are consumed with the invocation of ancient nightmares, dutifully bound in fiction and poetry.
Lee’s work has been seen in distinguished genre magazines such as Weird Tales, Space and Time and Dark Wisdom, and in notable anthologies including Horrors Beyond, Corpse Blossoms, High Seas Cthulhu and Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 1. His stories and poems have earned Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Growing up on the west coast of Florida in the Tampa Bay area, Lee’s inclination toward horror manifested itself early in his childhood when he began flipping through the pages of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland and reading Gold Key Comic classics like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Throughout the 1970s, Lee also watched his share of “horrible old movies” on Creature Feature, a locally produced horror movie series hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer (Dick Bennick Sr.).
Lee found his first receptive audience amongst his peers in high school, though his creative output took a different form in those days: Lee self-published a series of comic books featuring a character known as Pigmund. More than a dozen issues were produced chronicling Pigmund's exploits, usually thinly veiled parodies of contemporary films, myths and even literary classics with titles such as "The Living Headlights," "The Mund with the Golden Gun," "Close Encounters of the Boring Kind" and "The Merchant is a Menace."
At about the same time, Lee discovered Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Richard Matheson and other masters of the genre. His growing appreciation of these authors, along with his love for all things macabre, soon led him to start writing horror and dark fantasy.
In 1992, Lee made his first "sale" - his short story, "Cracks," appeared in Nocturnal Lyric, Issue 28. The following year, his short story "Sanctum" appeared in Mythic Circle, Issue 15. The words continue to flow.
Immediately after high school, Lee took a part time job at Sears Product Services, working in the parts department. That summer job evolved into a 17-year career. Foreseeing that the company would eventually eliminate his position (not to mention the entire center where he worked), Lee went back to school in 1999. In August 2002, he earned his Bachelor's Degree in English: Professional & Technical Writing from the University of South Florida, Tampa.
Today, Lee is an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers. Covering the Tampa area entertainment beat, he has penned hundreds of film, theater and book reviews and has interviewed novelists as well as music industry icons such as Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains, Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, and Spencer Davis of The Spencer Davis Group. His work for TBN has been recognized repeatedly by the Florida Press Association, including a first place award for criticism in the 2007 Better Weekly Newspaper Contest.
The author resides in the Tampa Bay area with his wife and daughter.
Lee’s work has been seen in distinguished genre magazines such as Weird Tales, Space and Time and Dark Wisdom, and in notable anthologies including Horrors Beyond, Corpse Blossoms, High Seas Cthulhu and Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 1. His stories and poems have earned Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Growing up on the west coast of Florida in the Tampa Bay area, Lee’s inclination toward horror manifested itself early in his childhood when he began flipping through the pages of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland and reading Gold Key Comic classics like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Throughout the 1970s, Lee also watched his share of “horrible old movies” on Creature Feature, a locally produced horror movie series hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer (Dick Bennick Sr.).
Lee found his first receptive audience amongst his peers in high school, though his creative output took a different form in those days: Lee self-published a series of comic books featuring a character known as Pigmund. More than a dozen issues were produced chronicling Pigmund's exploits, usually thinly veiled parodies of contemporary films, myths and even literary classics with titles such as "The Living Headlights," "The Mund with the Golden Gun," "Close Encounters of the Boring Kind" and "The Merchant is a Menace."
At about the same time, Lee discovered Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Richard Matheson and other masters of the genre. His growing appreciation of these authors, along with his love for all things macabre, soon led him to start writing horror and dark fantasy.
In 1992, Lee made his first "sale" - his short story, "Cracks," appeared in Nocturnal Lyric, Issue 28. The following year, his short story "Sanctum" appeared in Mythic Circle, Issue 15. The words continue to flow.
Immediately after high school, Lee took a part time job at Sears Product Services, working in the parts department. That summer job evolved into a 17-year career. Foreseeing that the company would eventually eliminate his position (not to mention the entire center where he worked), Lee went back to school in 1999. In August 2002, he earned his Bachelor's Degree in English: Professional & Technical Writing from the University of South Florida, Tampa.
Today, Lee is an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers. Covering the Tampa area entertainment beat, he has penned hundreds of film, theater and book reviews and has interviewed novelists as well as music industry icons such as Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains, Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, and Spencer Davis of The Spencer Davis Group. His work for TBN has been recognized repeatedly by the Florida Press Association, including a first place award for criticism in the 2007 Better Weekly Newspaper Contest.
The author resides in the Tampa Bay area with his wife and daughter.