Day 7 of the 14 Days of Halloween, featuring the Australian Horror Writers Association

Summary: Matthew Tait was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1977. After finishing high school in 1993, he made a ridiculous decision to take up writing and be poor. For a while, he lived in a delusional state, thinking that success was going to be handed to him on a silver platter. Then, unfortunately, reality hit, and he realized that years of practice, rejection, and working other jobs was the only way to achieve this goal. It began in his ninth year at school, fed up with the education system. The time was right to find another passion . . . some sort of escapism to eclipse the expectations of a religious and sports orientated high-school regime. "I was handed a copy of The Long Walk by Stephen King," he says, as if the name holds little merit in today's popular culture. "After that, my life changed . . . and definitely for the better." Matthew's stories from Ghosts in a Desert World have been published in numerous e-zines. Currently, he is at work on the Reunion trilogy: Meridian, Olearia, and The Hope of Kinfold. He lives with his partner Lani White and a Siamese cat named Oscar, who is like their only son.