Toby Venables is a writer and lecturer in Film Studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He developed a liking for horror early, watching old Universal movies when his parents thought he was asleep, and writing and starring in a (very bad) vampire movie for which he built his own coffin.

He has since been an incredibly unsuccessful artist and even less successful busker, presented an entertainment show on local TV, designed and painted stage sets and worked in a Cambridge college.

He established a more coherent existence in journalism, eventually becoming editor of magazines in Cambridge, Oxford and Bristol, for which he reviewed films, wrote features, and interviewed personal heroes such as Ray Harryhausen, Eddie Izzard, Kevin Spacey, Chuck Palahniuk, and Gunther von Hagens. He also orchestrated a Halloween hoax which involved building and photographing a werewolf.

Since going freelance, his words have appeared in a wide range of media, including web, radio, TV, cinema, mobile phone and the back end of a bus. In 2001 he won the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize, and spent the proceeds on a Fender Telecaster.

He now lives in a secure location with his wife, where he is developing a screenplay for a leading UK film company while preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse.