Jack Ketchum is the pen name for American horror novelist Dallas Mayr. Born in Livingstone, NJ, Ketchum has been a lumber sales representative, a teacher, and actor. As a teenager he had the honor of meeting “Psycho” author Robert Bloch who would become his mentor and friend until his death in 1994.
He credits the chance acquaintance he made with Henry Miller while he was interning at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency as the turning point in his budding career. Henry Miller invited the young Ketchum into his Pacific Palisades home, and soon after became his agent helping him publish his first novel “Off Season”.
His first novel Off Season went on to receive widespread popularity and critical acclaim. In fact, the book received extraordinary…show more content… With increasing popularity of his novels, some of the novels were adapted into feature films. The Lost, which was his first novel to be made into a movie achieved cult status after becoming a runaway success in theaters. The adaptation of the highly controversial The Girl Next Door also did well in theaters. However, his most important works that catapulted him to critical and commercial success in the Box Office were the adaptation of the novel Red into film. The movie made by Magnolia Pictures starred Tom Sizemore and Brian Cox. After getting rave reviews at the Sundance Film festival, the movie went on to make a great showing in the US. Subsequent translations of the novel saw the novel make significant inroads internationally.
Jack Ketchum was not done, as Lucky McKee’s adaptation of his novel The Woman into a film enjoyed even more commercial success. The New York Times had high praise for the adaptation asserting the perfect calibration of pace, the creation of powerful parables and the attention to detail in the film.
Ketchum currently lives in New York and continues to write novels, screenplays, short stories, reviews, and