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Ian Smith was born in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, but at the age of 11 he moved with his family to the town of Peebles in the Borders region of Scotland.\u00a0 His brother and sisters\u00a0still live there now. \u00a0Since then, he has lived in England, Switzerland, Japan, Ethiopia, North Korea, Libya, Tunisia and Sri Lanka, as well as spending shorter stints working in India, the Republic of Ireland, Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Myanmar and Mauritius.\u00a0 He currently lives in Singapore.<\/p>\n
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Over the years he has worked a lot in education.\u00a0 In addition to being a teacher, he has served as an academic manager, a classroom assistant, an educational consultant, a one-to-one tutor, a teacher-trainer and a university lecturer.\u00a0 But he has also put in time as a bookshop assistant, a cleaner in a skin clinic, a farmhand, a general dogsbody for a consultancy firm while it was researching the fish-processing area of Aberdeen Harbour, a grape-picker, a hop-picker, a kitchen porter, a member of a nightclub\u2019s floor-staff, a night porter, a proof-reader, a supermarket shelf-stacker and truck unloader, a trainee journalist, a travel-book researcher, a volunteer at a special home for boys with behavioural issues (or \u2018maladjusted boys\u2019 as they were called back in those un-PC days), a warehouseman and a youth hostel warden.\u00a0 The nightclub floor-staff job was definitely the worst one.\u00a0 No thanks for those memories, Aberdeen Ritzy\u2019s.<\/p>\n
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When he finds time, he writes short stories\u00a0\u2014 horror, science fiction and fantasy ones as well as mainstream \u2018literary\u2019 ones, as snobby critics like to call them.\u00a0 These have been published in magazines, webzines and newspapers such as\u00a0Aphelion<\/em>, the<\/em> Belfast Telegraph<\/em>, Blood<\/em> Moon<\/em> Rising<\/em>, Close 2 the Bone<\/em>, Crimson Quill Quarterly<\/em>, Death<\/em> Head<\/em> Grin<\/em>, the<\/em> Dream<\/em> Zone<\/em>, the<\/em>\u00a0Eildon Tree<\/em>, <\/em>Flashes<\/em> in<\/em> the<\/em> Dark<\/em>, <\/em>Groundswell<\/em>, <\/em>Gutter<\/em>, <\/em>Hellfire<\/em> Crossroads<\/em>, the <\/em>Honest<\/em> Ulsterman<\/em>, <\/em>Horla<\/em>, <\/em>Horrified<\/em> Magazine<\/em>, the <\/em>Horror<\/em> Zine<\/em>, <\/em>Hungur <\/em>\/ the Hungur Chronicles<\/em>, <\/em>Legend<\/em>, <\/em>ParABnormal<\/em> Magazine<\/em>, the <\/em>Peeblesshire<\/em> News<\/em>, <\/em>Roadworks<\/em>, Savage Realms Monthly, <\/em>Scratchings<\/em>, <\/em>Schlock<\/em>! <\/em>Webzine<\/em>, <\/em>Shotgun<\/em> Honey<\/em>, the <\/em>Sirens<\/em> Call<\/em>, <\/em>Sorcerous<\/em>\u00a0Signals<\/em>, Still Here<\/em>, the<\/em> Stygian<\/em> Lepus<\/em>, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, <\/em>Whetstone, Witch House<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Write<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His fiction has also appeared in the anthologies\u00a0The Best of the Horror Zine: The Middle Years,<\/em>\u00a0The Cryptid Chronicles, Eerie Christmas 4, <\/em>\u00a0Fall into Fantasy 2023 <\/em>and 2025,<\/em>\u00a0Fearful Fun,<\/em>\u00a0Horror Stories from Horrified Volume 1: Christmas<\/em> and Volume 2: Folk<\/em> Horror,<\/em>\u00a0Midnight Street Anthology 4: Strange Days,<\/em> Monster: Underdog Anthology 24<\/em>, Nightmare Fuel: Objects of Horror 2022, <\/em>Mind<\/em> Terrors<\/em> 2023 <\/em>and Body Horror 2024,<\/em>\u00a0Railroad Tales<\/em>, Swan Song: The Final Anthology,<\/em>\u00a0Swords and Sorceries: Tales <\/em>of Heroic Fantasy Volume 3, <\/em>Xenobiology: Stranger Creatures<\/em>, White Witch’s Hat and Other Yuletide Ghost Stories<\/em> and Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He won the Peebles Art Festival short fiction competition in 1998 and Northern Ireland\u2019s Brian Moore short story of the year competition in 1999.\u00a0 He has also done research and writing about Japan and Ethiopia for the Fodor\u2019s and Footprint guidebooks series and is the author of two non-fiction books about his local football teams in Scotland, Peebles Rovers and Tweeddale Rovers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His work has appeared under the pseudonyms Jim Mountfield (for horror stuff), Rab Foster (for fantasy stuff), Steve Cashel (for non-horrific, non-fantastical Scottish stuff), Paul McAllister (for non-horrific, non-fantastical Irish stuff)\u2026 and, occasionally, under his own boring name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ian Smith was born in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, but at the age of 11 he moved with his family to the town of Peebles in the Borders region of Scotland.\u00a0 His brother and sisters\u00a0still live there now. \u00a0Since then, he has lived in England, Switzerland, Japan, Ethiopia, North Korea, Libya, Tunisia and … <\/p>\n