Preston Fassel

Fassel was born in Houston, Texas, but spent his childhood between St. Louis, Missouri and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.[1][2] He was raised Catholic; his mother's family coming from a line of Poles and ethnic Jews who had converted.[3][4][5] His father worked for the phone company, and he grew up around telecommunications equipment, later comparing part of his childhood experience to the aesthetics of Videodrome.[1]

When he was seventeen, Fassel dropped out of high school and obtained his GED after budget cuts resulted in the elimination of most of his school's elective courses. After obtaining his GED, he interned for the Broken Arrow police department evidence room, where he received the President's Volunteer Service Award for his work.[6] He attended community college at Lone Star College in Conroe, Texas, where he began writing short stories set in 1970s Times Square that were published in the campus's literary journal.[3] He late transferred to Sam Houston State University, from which he graduated in 2011 with a degree in psychology.[2]

Fassel spent his teenage years renting grindhouse, horror, and exploitation films from local video rental stores in Oklahoma, initially out of a desire to desensitize himself to disturbing imagery and as an act of defiance against what he perceived of as the oppressively conservative culture of rural Oklahoma; he would later credit his love of horror cinema as contributing to his desire to become a horror writer.[1][4][3] He further credited his mother's purchasing him a copy of Stephen King's The Shining with inspiring him to become a horror writer,[7] and Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford's Sleazoid Express with interesting him in 42nd street culture.[4]

Fassel initially began writing for an optometric trade publication while working as an optician, receiving a job offer after writing a letter to the editor. He later transitioned into writing for Rue Morgue after pitching a story to their editor-in-chief at a horror convention, beginning by writing reviews and later transitioning into writing feature stories.[1] During his time at the magazine, Fassel was nominated for the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for an interview he conducted with Herschell Gordon Lewis.[8] Concurrently to his time with Rue Morgue, Fassel also contributed to the pop culture websites Cinedump.com and HeardTell.com, being nominated for a further two Rondo awards for an interview with Kelli Maroney and in the best category article, respectively.[9] He spent 2013 researching the life of actress Vanessa Howard, culminating in the first published biography of her, "Remembering Vanessa," printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Screem magazine.[2][10]

Beginning in 2007, Fassel began working on a book he would later call "the theater story" that acted as an expansion of the short stories he had written in college; he worked on it for a period of about six years before shelving the project because "it was really terrible" and, despite being 250,000 words, "nothing had happened in it yet."[11] He would later recycle ideas from "the theater story" into his debut novel, Our Lady of the Inferno.[11] Fassel initially sold the book to an independent press called Fear Front based out of Georgia, shortly before the company went out of business.[1] Around the time of the book's publication, Fassel worked as an extra on the set of Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, where he met producer Dallas Sonnier, who expressed interest in acquiring the film rights; Fassel later convinced Sonnier to purchase the republication rights as well.[1][7] Fassel additionally asked for a job with Sonnier's production company, Cinestate, as part of the deal, unaware that Sonnier had recently purchased Fangoria magazine; Sonnier subsequently hired Fassel to work for the publication.[1] He joined the staff as a writer in 2017; from 2018 until the magazine's 2020 sale, he wrote a column called Corrupt Signals, focusing on obscure and foreign horror cinema.[1] For his work with Fangoria, Fassel was nominated for a Rondo award for best column and (along with Tate Steinsiek) best article.[12]

Fangoria republished Our Lady of the Inferno in September 2018 to generally positive reviews. It was named one of Bloody Disgusting's ten best horror books of 2018,[13] and won gold in the horror category at the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards[14]

In 2018, it was announced that a film adaptation of the book was in development at Fangoria, with Fassel collaborating on the screenplay and serving as an executive producer alongside Sonnier and Phil Nobile Jr.[15]

In 2019, it was announced that Fangoria would publish Fassel's second novel, Beasts of 42nd Street, in 2020.[16] In 2020, he served as the editor for Mick Garris' debut anthology, These Evil Things We Do.[17] Following the 2020 sale of Fangoria to Tara Ansley and Abhi Goel, Fassel said that the publishing rights to Beasts had reverted to him, and that the option on the film rights to Our Lady of the Inferno would expire in 2022.[18] In 2021, he published his first novella, a science fiction horror-comedy, The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov, with 35% of proceeds going to The Trevor Project.[19]

In 2021 Fassel published his first nonfiction work, Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street, the first ever biography of Sleazoid Express founder Bill Landis, which also includes a history of the magazine.[20]

Fassel has referred to himself as Catholic in interviews. He identifies as ethnically, though not religiously, Jewish,[21] and has said that his Jewish cultural heritage has had a "tremendous impact" on him.[4][5]