Anthony Timpone (AT): Well, I started out as a fan of the genre when I was a kid, watching the Universal monster movies and the Hammer films and going to the drive in to see a lot of the movies of the 70's and late 60's. I just always had a big love for horror and science fiction fantasy. I used to read the comic books as a kid and I always had a passion for Famous Monsters Of Filmland. When I was in high school I used to do my own fanzines, and I joined the science fiction club. I used to go to the conventions and meet people like Tom Savini, and try to interview them and then try to sell the articles to Famous Monsters or Fangoria or any publications like that. That was my dream, to work on a horror magazine. Sure enough, as soon as I got out of college, that was my first job and that?s where I remain today. I actually like getting up in the morning to go to work because I?m doing what I always wanted to do. Which is, ya know... edit a horror magazine, get involved with horror projects, and movies and videos. It's all very fun and exciting.

MC: How did you come to work for Fangoria and eventually land the gig as editor?

AT: Well, it was mostly networking at conventions. And I think that anyone wanting to get into the business or anyone who does writing... that?s what they do, they go to the conventions. And the horror personalities there are very approachable. They're all good people. They enjoy meeting their fans. And it's just a great place to network. That's where a lot of make-up guys get started. They'll bring their portfolio's and show them around. And film makers hand out their short films. Fango con's really are the place to meet people that can help advance their careers.

MC: Is there anything you can tell us about your early experiences with Fangoria?

AT: While I was still in college I was writing freelance articles for Starlog, a science fiction magazine, because at the time, Fangoria used to be pretty much all written «in-house», meaning that the editors themselves wrote all the articles, which was pretty unheard of at the time.  So Fangoria was a very difficult market to break into for that reason because the editors at that time, Bob Martin and Dave Everett, for some reason, they just liked doing all the articles themselves. They'd write as many as four articles each per issue. I used to go to the science fiction conventions and Creation shows and meet a lot of the Star Trek and Star Wars people, and they were also very accommodating back then. I would interview these science fiction people and then sell the articles to Starlog, the science fiction magazine at that time. Then I started meeting some of the horror people, like Tom Savini and Caroline Munro. And I would sell those articles to a magazine called Monsterland. Fangoria didn't need them so I went to the competition, Monsterland, which was edited by Forest J. Ackerman who was sort of my mentor in the business. I started doing a lot of writing for Monsterland toward the end of college, and when I got out of college, I ran into the editor of Starlog at a convention and told him I was just getting out of school and asked if there were any positions opening up. A month later, he called me while I was working at my dad's deli, to come in for an interview. I went in and got the job.