Simon Maginn

Simon Maginn (born 1961 in is a British horror/thriller writer. He is best known for the 1994 novel Sheep, which was released as a film under the titleThe Dark in 2005.

Early life
Maginn was born in Wallasey, Merseyside) in 1961. He cites among his early influences films like Psycho, The Amityville Horror and The Shining, as well as novels like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. He studied music at the University of Sussex, specialising in percussion and composition.

Career
Maginn published his first novel, Sheep, in 1994, which won WHSmith Fresh Talent Award. He is also the author of: Virgins and Martyrs (Corgi, 1995), A Sickness of the Soul (Corgi 1995), Methods of Confinement (Black Swan 1996) and the novella Rattus (Pendragon Press 2010). The last of these was published alongside a novella by Gary Fry, in a compilation entitled Feral Companions.

Maginn has also published satirical comedies under the pseudonym Simon Nolan: As Good as it Gets (Quartet Books, 1998), The Vending Machine of Justice (Quartet Books, 2000) and Whitehawk (Revenge Ink, 2010).

In 1993, Maginn was one of six authors chosen by W. H. Smith for a campaign involving a purchase of 20,000 paperback books. At the time, Maginn was a music teacher.

He is politically active on and off social media. In 2018, Maginn was involved in an online clash with J. K. Rowling over tweets criticizing accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Personal Life
Maginn has spent much of his life suffering from DSPS (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder), a chronic sleep issue, which meant that he was unable to keep a conventional job, "except for short bursts" during his twenties. This problem, he says, has since been resolved.