Jason S. Hornsby is the founder and head editor of the indie publishing label BLACK SPIRAL PRESS, as well as the author of GHOST SICKNESS, EVERY SIGH, THE END (now available in a 20th Anniversary Special Edition), DESERT BLEEDS RED, and ELEVEN TWENTY-THREE. His work has been lauded for its originality, international settings, roots in current events, dark humor, themes of paranoia, and extreme horror.
GHOST SICKNESS was released in July 2025 by Black Spiral Press. It is a dark, fast-paced descent into the emotional and supernatural fallout of absence, addiction, and male identity. In his latest release, Hornsby delivers a genuinely haunting novel that merges expat malaise with Southern Gothic horror. Brutal, bleakly funny, and profoundly human, GHOST SICKNESS is a story for anyone who's ever tried—and failed—to leave the past behind. The Bangkok Post recently described it as "Bleak, beautiful, and deeply disturbing. Hornsby drags the haunted house into the modern expat psyche, then burns it down with hallucinatory dread," while Bowie Ibarra, author of the acclaimed DOWN THE ROAD series, has hailed GHOST SICKNESS as "a true masterpiece of grief and permanent loss."
EVERY SIGH, THE END, Hornsby's debut novel, will be re-released with an all-new Foreword, new cover art and interior layout, and a conclusive edit on January 23, 2026. Gabrielle Faust, author of the ETERNAL VIGILANCE series, described the novel as “Iconic…sure to be an interpretation that is considered now and by future audiences as an astute understanding of the jaded, apathetic paranoia and selfish, bitter ego of the late 1990s, as well as a distinctly brilliant addition to the zombie genre.”
His previous novel, DESERT BLEEDS RED, also proved a major critical success. Peter Clines of THE BROKEN ROOM and -14- fame has described it as "...a masterpiece. It isn't limited by genre or style or any of those other ways people try to contain a book. It's just a masterpiece." Craig DiLouie, author of SUFFER THE CHILDREN and MY EX, THE ANTI-CHRIST, said that Hornsby's "prose runs deep and his imagination and sheer talent soar in this very dark and epic fantasy."
Originally from Lakeland, Florida, Hornsby is an honors graduate of University of South Florida, with degrees in Literature and American Studies. His first major release, EVERY SIGH, THE END, was written in his first year following graduation. Hornsby also has a Master's degree in Professional Writing and Editing from the University of Southern New Hampshire, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2023.
For reasons he still can’t quite articulate, the author moved to Beijing in early 2008, and has remained adrift ever since. Hornsby has gotten himself into trouble all over China and Southeast Asia, witnessing the Urumqi Riots of 2009, getting lost in the jungles of Malaysia, attacked by rampaging langurs in Sri Lanka, and almost drowning in Indonesia—twice. He has traveled and dodged trouble in over fourteen provinces in China thus far, as well as backpacked, hitchhiked, and philandered his way through every country in Southeast Asia. When not teaching English literature or traversing the globe, he also contributes to several travel and expat lifestyle magazines in Southeast Asia and China. Since summer of 2022, Hornsby and his family have lived in Bangkok. Before that, there were stints in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Ningbo, and Chengdu.
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