ANDREW JAY FOX was born in 1964 and grew up in North Miami Beach, Florida. The first movie he remembers seeing is Japanese monster festDestroy All Monsters, viewed from the backseat of his stepdad’s Caprice convertible. Early passions included Universal horror movies, 1950s giant monster flicks, WWII navy dramas,Planet of the Apes, and horror comics, particularly Marv Wolfman’s and Gene Colan’s “Tomb of Dracula.” His earliest exposure to literary science fiction came by way of H. G. Welles, Ray Bradbury, and Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series; other favorites through the years have included Robert Silverberg, J. G. Ballard, Richard Matheson, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
He attended Loyola University in New Orleans, where he studied social work and wrote a fantasy play for visually handicapped children that involved the audience rubbing their hands on a vaseline-coated foam rubber mermaid’s tail and sniffing spoiled sardines. He studied public administration at Syracuse University, then worked at a public children’s psychiatric center on Long Island while continuing to write plays (none of which involved sardines). Since returning to New Orleans in 1990, he has worked as manager of the Louisiana Commodity Supplemental Food Program, a federally funded monthly nutrition program for low-income senior citizens. In 1995, following the death of his cousin in the French Quarter on New Year’s Eve due to a falling bullet, he helped found the New Year Coalition, an advocacy group that helps educate the public about the dangers of celebratory gunfire. Also in 1995, he joined a monthly writing workshop founded by award-winning SF author George Alec Effinger.Fat White Vampire Blues is his first novel to see print.