Women in Horror - Jessica Palmer

Jessica Palmer was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother became a professional clown when she was in her teens, leaving Jessica irrevocably altered. She received her degree in nursing and worked in hospitals, starting with medical-surgical units. Eventually, she settled into psychiatric nursing where she got along famously with her patients.

Her medical background presented opportunities to write. In 1976, she was asked to develop a script for educational television, entitled Journey To Nowhere, about the medical aspects of addiction. Later she became a technical writer for the safety and health department at Schlumberger Well Services with an emphasis on explosives and radiation. The job took her to England where she became a British subject.

The fates decreed her combined experiences constituted a hazard to herself and others. Jessica returned to her first love, genre fiction. She wrote her first novel at the age of nine – ninety-nine typewritten pages about her then-hero Max Smart of Get Smart. Altogether, she has had 28 books published in fiction and non-fiction, including university textbooks about Native American history and culture.

Jessica has received numerous awards in journalism, spanning a period from 1980 to 2014. Lullaby, published by Pocket Books, was nominated for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker award in 1991. Now she concentrates on satire. Parallel Universe Publications released her collection of short stories, Other Visions of Heaven and Hell in 2015, and will be publishing her latest collection, Fractious Fairy Tales later this month.