About Me & Awards

I’m Gemma Amor and I write horror fiction

gemma-amor-author-headshot Gemma Amor is a Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award Nominated horror author, illustrator, voice actor and podcaster, based in Bristol, in the UK. She was named one of the ‘Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age‘ by Esquire Magazine, and recently featured in Ellen Datlow’s prestigious ‘Best Horror of the Year’ anthology, Vol. 15.

She is published independently, on Amazon and via traditional means (she considers herself a hybrid author for those reasons). She writes genre-fluid, emotional and character-driven horror and speculative fiction.  

Gemma self-published her debut short story collection CRUEL WORKS OF NATURE in 2018, and went on to release DEAR LAURA, GRIEF IS A FALSE GOD, WHITE PINES, GIRL ON FIRE, THESE WOUNDS WE MAKE, WE ARE WOLVES and SIX ROOMS before signing her first traditional publishing deal for her novel FULL IMMERSION, published by Angry Robot books in 2022. This was followed by THE ONCE YELLOW HOUSE, CHRISTMAS AT WHEELDALE INN and THE FOLLY in 2023 (originally Polis books, shortly to be re-released by Datura). ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST is her twelfth published book, and her fifth for Cemetery Gates Media.

Her next scheduled release is an anthology of ancestral horror for Titan Books called ROOTS OF MY FEARS, as Editor, and two as of yet unannounced novels.

Gemma is the co-creator of horror-comedy podcast Calling Darkness, starring Kate Siegel, and her stories feature many times on popular horror anthology shows The NoSleep Podcast (including a six part adaptation of DEAR LAURA), Shadows at the Door, Creepy, The Hidden Frequencies and The Grey Rooms. She has also hosted Pseudopod a few times. She has appeared in a number of print anthologies and had made numerous podcast appearances to date.

A short film she co-wrote called HIDDEN MOTHER (2022) was well received at multiple film festivals and she is currently working on her first feature length screenplay.

Gemma illustrates her own works and also provides original, hand-painted artwork for book covers on commission. She narrates audiobooks too, including THE POSSESSION OF NATALIE GLASGOW by Hailey Piper, in 2020, and FULL IMMERSION in 2022.

She has a background in Marketing, which some will say is irrefutable proof of no soul. 

Keep up to date with her general musings on Gemma Amor’s blog.   

Gemma is represented by Becky LeJeune at Bond Literary Agency.

Awards

2023

2019

gemma amor bram stoker award nominee

Why write such scary stuff?

I remember when I was first really scared by a novel. I was travelling in India (no, really, I was), and found, as I shuffled along one stinking hot afternoon in central Mumbai, a makeshift bookshop laid out on the pavement before me. It was full of dog-eared paperbacks. One book jacket jumped out at me immediately, firstly because it was in English, and secondly it was the right size and weight to fit into my backpack without shattering my spine, already half-crippled from months of lugging my belongings around. 

The book was Cujo, by the inimitable Stephen King. I read it in one sitting. It lit up my imagination like a firework.

It had everything: vulnerable protagonists, visceral gore, horrifying villains, a sense of sadness and suffering that pervaded throughout, a tantalizing hint of the supernatural. It was short, punchy, and unforgettable… and it started a fire in me. 

The second time was reading Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, which has one of the most effective ‘jump scare’ scenes ever committed to paper. After that, it was the very human horror found in the short stories of Daphne du Maurier, and after that, it was the seductive, dark feminism Angela Carter was so magically capable of. I realised I had a home in horror, a space to explore the different facets of human desire, motivation and capability.

I wanted to write something that made people feel the way I felt as I eagerly flipped the pages of those books. And so that’s my purpose: keep writing, keep learning, keep working on my craft until I have something that scares, that disgusts, that seduces, that upsets you to your very core.