Meet H. A. Spector

H. A. Spector is an MFA student at Southern New Hampshire University, a fantasy and horror writer, a podcaster, an avid TTRPG player, a video game enthusiast (the culprit that prevents him from writing as much as he should), and a lover of all things macabre. His thesis project and current work-in-progress, The Legends of Orgos: The Omniscient Library, is an adventure fantasy novel and is best described as a little Legends & Lattes, with a pinch of Fourth Wing, and topped with a dash of danger and intrigue. Outside of writing, he is the host of the podcast Ink to Paper: Stories & Interviews where he interviews authors, writers and fellow MFA students and shares their short stories with the world. In addition, he dreams of launching a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style podcast that presents fantasy and horror fiction in an audio format that gives listeners agency in how the story unfolds episode after episode.

H. A. Spector grew up in rural Arizona where he spent his teenage years watching slasher movies with his sister. But it would take another twenty-two years before he fully discovered his love for horror. In 2020, as the world came to a grinding halt, he decided to try out a game of Dungeons & Dragons as a player first, only to pick up the mantle and begin game master duties a month later. Since then, writing fantasy stories that players experience through the game’s mechanics has become his biggest hobby, and nearly his entire personality. It was a D&D campaign he ran for over a year that led to his current thesis project idea.

Currently, H. A. Spector resides in the suburbs of beautiful (and wet) Portland, Oregon with his partner-in-crime. He is passionate about building local and digital writing communities. He founded a Discord server where he gathered fellow MFA students from SNHU to give them and himself a semblance of community to critique, discuss, and make personal and professional connections that will hopefully last a lifetime. His advice for his fellow writers would be to do anything to find their community, even if they have to start it themselves, and to invest in their local bookstores and libraries to ensure readership for all continues to exist for generations to come.