R. Michael Burns is an October child with a background in philosophy, theater and other occult arts. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Colorado Springs Fiction Writers Group, and the Gainesville Fiction Writers Group.

His fiction has appeared in various magazines and e-zines, including Dreams of Decadence, City Slab, Dark Regions, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Dark Recesses, and Lovecraft's Weird Mysteries, as well as in the anthologies Orphans of the Storm, Bell, Book & Beyond, Cthulhu Express, Extremes 5, Goodbye, Darwin, Bound for Evil, Horror Library III, and Fantasist Press's forthcoming Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel. He has other fiction forthcoming in the e-zine Arkham Tales and the print magazine The Shroud. His article "Creative Writing 301" was picked in a Predators and Editors poll as the second-best non-fiction article of 2006.

A Colorado native, he lived for the better part of five years in Japan, where he taught English to Japanese students from 1 to 70. He currently resides in the dark swamps of Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches high school English and acts as assistant coach of speech and debate.

EYES OF A STRANGER (short story) - A dark yet brilliant artist becomes fixated on a young woman he spies at an exhibition, but it quickly becomes unclear which of them is the seducer, and which the seduced.  Originally published in Dreams of Decadence magazine, Issue #6, Spring 1998.

CELIA (short story) - 'Celia' appears in the anthology Bell, Book & Beyond, edited by P.D. Cacek, from the Design Image Group.

GASLIGHT AND SHADOWS (short story) - An actress learns just how much she's willing to give to her art.  First published on the DNA Publications website in Summer 2000.

THE GALLERY (short story) - A young woman hunting for her missing boyfriend crosses paths with an artist whose work truly transcends life and death. . . This story originally appeared in the online magazine Dark Recesses.