Meet the Authors
Bob McGough and Ben Meeks
Bob and Ben started the Southern Gothic Fantasy website because they wanted to a highlight genre of literature that they both love and write in. They hope you find some value here, and also that you'll check out their works.
Born and raised in South Alabama, Bob is an author, podcaster, and game designer who has been blessed and cursed to lead an interesting life. A mix of traditionally and self published, he is best known as the author of the Jubal County Saga, a southern gothic fantasy series set in Alabama. As the world's worst vampire, he feeds on the groans of those he has punned around.
More interestingly he is an Eagle Scout who picks up hitchhikers with reckless abandon, one of which was a carnie who still owes him a fair ride. He’s also been stalked, gave a Prophet a lift, and been stagger drunk in more states than he would care to admit.
To go along with his two useless college degrees he spent time as a roadie for a band you've never heard. Other musical exploits include breaking his wrist in a wall of death at a Divine Heresy show, shaking hands with Glenn Danzig, and being the producer on a trio of albums. He’s worked and written for musical acts ranging from Upchurch the Redneck to Stitches. No, he hadn’t heard of them either. He spent two years as the National President of a punk rock crew with chapters across six states. In addition to the passible podcasts he's made he has also filmed terrible short horror movies.
Other bizarre achievements include: having once licked the Wailing Wall, skinny-dipping at a wedding, giving a camel a coke in Israel, getting flashed in Paris, and watching a monkey steal a man’s wallet in Costa Rica. Once, while on a quest to find some quartzite to turn into arrowheads, he dug up a dead cow in a creek thinking it was a human cadaver. In college he used to give haunted ghost tours of Troy (even though he’s pretty sure ghosts aren’t real) and has a cousin that’s a water witch.
More relevant, he wrote some books, then self-pubbed some other books, and has also been published by a number of other folks with questionable judgment. He’s written for video games, designed board games, and owns a disturbing number of roleplaying games. The fictional things he writes sometimes come weirdly true.
He lives in the middle of Alabama with his amazing LadyWife, the Kiddo, and a clowder of increasingly portly cats.
Ben grew up in Dahlonega, the biggest small town in the North Georgia mountains. He spent his childhood appreciating nature and as he grew older was able to have a wide variety of unusual and exciting experiences. Ben was able to travel internationally, including Europe and India. He participated in, and won, a martial arts competition, was hit by a ricocheting bullet, and was in a high speed car chase. He also received a late night phone call from the secret service, who he hung up on.
Ben appreciates fantasy in all forms with a special fondness for shifters. Suffering from a lack of shifter fiction that appealed to him he decided to write some. Ben prides himself on using real world experiences to add realism to his fiction. He uses his love of the outdoors and growing up in North Georgia as the setting for his southern gothic fantasy series, The Keeper Chronicles.
Jethro the Haint Blue
The Not Very Official Mascot of Southern Gothic Fantasy!