Born at high noon on the summer solstice, 1950, in Ohio, Stanley C. Sargent grew up near his grandparents' 200 acre farm. He populated three large, abandoned gravel pits on the farm with prehistoric and mythological beasts only he could see.
At age 18, Stan pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco, where he could live as he liked and be openly gay. He attended a conference on Mayan hieroglyphs in Guatemala City in the mid-1970's, and he spent a month in Iran in 1979. He worked for many years for corporate law firms, as word processing department supervisor.
In 1991, Stan abandoned the business world. He continued his long-time interest in and production of art (ink pointillism and later airbrush painting); in 1999, he completely illustrated a paperback book by W.H. Pugmire. At age 44, he began writing horror fiction inspired by the style of H.P. Lovecraft.
It wasn't long before Robert Price "discovered" Stan's writing and began publishing his work in various periodicals and trade paperbacks. Stan's fiction has appeared in a number of Lovecraftian anthologies and magazines both in the U.S. and abroad, and a few of his non-fiction articles concerning Lovecraft have seen print.
A first collection of his tales, ANCIENT EXHUMATIONS, was published in late 1999 by Mythos Press and has subsequently sold out after receiving excellent reviews from "Locus" and "Cemetery Danse" magazines among others. A second collection, NYARLATOPHIS AND OTHER LOVECRAFTIAN INCURSIONS will be published in early 2002 along with a reprint of his first collection.
I was born at high noon on June 21, the summer solstice, 1950, in Dayton, Ohio. Being the youngest child of three (my half-brother and half-sister, from my mother's first marriage, are eleven and ten years older than I), I withdrew into a self-created dream world populated with prehistoric animals and dreams of ancient, far off places and times. My private playground and retreat area consisted of three abandoned gravel pits that were a part of my maternal grandparents' two hundred acre farm adjacent to our property.
As an "advanced student," I was not popular socially in either grade school or high school. I enjoyed writing and drawing but due to low self-esteem, I did not have the self-confidence to actually do much with either of these natural skills. During the last couple years of high school, I took the opportunity to rebel against anything and everything, growing my hair long and listening to acid rock music.
After a short stint in a college not of my choice as a part-time student working in a sweat factory as part of a work-study program at Wilmington College, I decided college was not for me. Bidding my mother a fond farewell and thumbing my nose at my father, I hopped a plane for San Francisco, California, eager to submerge myself in the hippie culture of music, free-love and, of course, drugs. Here I've remained ever since, apart from a disastrous six-month side trip and return to college at the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I lived with my half-brother and his family. After a quick trip back to Dayton where I earned a bit of cash, I returned "home" to San Francisco.
Safely back in the open-minded city by the bay, I finally came to terms with my homosexual tendencies. Admittedly, I took way too many drugs, drank to much and had more sex than I shall herein detail. Yet, despite all, I somehow managed to survive.
I worked for many years for insurance companies, stock brokerage companies and law firms, as a word processor, then supervising word processing departments large and small.
