author, dreamer, part-time caped crusader

Tom Pawlik is the highly imaginative, Christy Award-winning author of Vanish, Valley of the Shadow, Beckon, The Way Back, Son of Man, the novella Recollection from the 7 Hours anthology and his latest space adventure, Johnny Quantum. His thought-provoking, edge-of-your-seat thrillers are infused with nonstop suspense that grabs you on the first page and won't let go until the last.

Tom's fascination with the weird, the creepy and the unknown began at a very early age when he was introduced to a bizarre 19th century German story book called "Der Struwwelpeter". The book was a collection of nightmarish morality tales by a German physician who obviously had too much time on his hands and no children of his own. The morbid nursery rhymes--sort of a Mother Goose meets Stephen King--included the frightful "Daumenlutscher" (Thumbsucker), a disturbing yarn about a young boy who was warned that if he continued to suck his thumbs, the local tailor would chop them off with his sewing shears. Other tales warned against playing with matches and being overly messy. Needless to say Tom never played with matches, generally kept his room clean and to this day retains the use of both his thumbs.

But the psychological damage was already done, and Tom's warped imagination turned him to writing his own creepy stories at a rather young age. Alas, no publishers were brave enough to bring his stories to print, so Tom would not realize his life-long dream of becoming a published author until the ripe old age of forty-two. Today, Tom is happily married with six children of his own... who, oddly enough, never sucked their thumbs.