Scott Thomas Books in Order

Scott Thomas grew up in Coffeyville, Kansas, and the small-town landscape never really left him. He has described an 1980s childhood of bike rides, creeks, local legends, and spooky stories swapped with friends, all raw material for the Kansas settings that return throughout his fiction.

Horror found him early.

The first story he remembers writing, in first grade, involved a detective, a cruise ship, and a headless body. His parents and teachers encouraged him to keep at it, while he filled his reading life with ghost stories, monsters, UFOs, and other things that made the ordinary world feel a little less safe.

Thomas studied English and Film at the University of Kansas, then moved to Los Angeles after graduation to work in entertainment. He spent years writing for television, learning how to shape character, pace a story, and keep an audience coming back for the next beat.

His television work has included Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, Best Friends Whenever, Raven’s Home, Malibu Rescue, and Day of the Dead. He has also written teleplays and TV movies across several networks, and received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his work on R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour.

But he kept writing horror on the side. Thomas finished an early draft of Kill Creek more than a decade before it was published, then entered it in the Launch Pad Manuscript Competition. The manuscript reached the top 10 and led to its publication.

Kill Creek, his 2017 debut, begins with four horror writers spending Halloween in a notorious haunted house. It brings together creative rivalry, old genre traditions, and the unnerving idea that a frightening place can follow people long after they leave it. An American Library Association reader committee selected it as the top horror book of 2017.

He followed it with Violet, a ghost story about Kris Barlow, her daughter, grief, and an imaginary friend who may not be imaginary. Midwestern Gothic takes the same regional interest into four novellas, with plainspoken heartland lives, old secrets, and trouble sitting just beneath the surface.

Thomas likes horror that starts somewhere recognizable and gradually lets something wrong take hold. That approach leaves room for fear, but also for parents, children, friends, and neighbors trying to carry on when the past will not stay quiet.

Thomas lives in Sherman Oaks, California, with his wife and two daughters. When he is not working in television, he continues to return to the haunted corners of Kansas in fiction.