Steve Nagy lives in Michigan with his wife and two daughters. He studied journalism at Kent State University in Ohio, and worked as a reporter and copy editor for several newspapers in the Midwest before becoming a phone support rep for a software company that services the newspaper industry. Nagy’s story “The Revelation of St Elvis the Impersonator” recently appeared in Electric Velocipede, and he is working on various short stories and two novels.

One of the novels is a horror tale set during the First World War and the Roaring Twenties. The other tackles the issues of cloning and identity. When he isn’t writing or spending his free time with his family, Nagy works as fiction editor for the fan lifestyle eZine Mars Dust.

“‘The Hanged Man of Oz’ is the first story I ever sold,” reveals the author, “and its genesis was an unlikely series of coincidences. I had never heard the urban legend about the hanging until my wife Melissa and I went to a dinner party with some friends. One was a fanatic about the movie, and he played the tape for our kids while we ate dinner. As the video reached the scene at the Tin Man’s cabin, he told me about the Hanged Man.

“When I saw the ‘hanging’ I wasn’t sure whether the story was true or not. That day, I thought it was a bird. But the legend stayed with me and I couldn’t stop thinking about how people let their imagination trick them. I wrote the tale thinking about those ‘tricks’ and the characters did take on a life of their own beyond the page. I know I can’t watch the film any longer without pausing at the hanging scene, so I can understand the power found in obsession.

“I submitted the story several places before sending it to Dennis Etchison to consider for an HWA anthology he was editing. He turned it down for that book, but said he had another in mind for which he might want it. That anthology turned out to be Gathering the Bones. When I told my family I had sold the story, my oldest daughter Lindsey was especially excited because Bones had a story by Ray Bradbury in it and her freshman English class was reading Fahrenheit 451. She thought that was the coolest thing about my sale.”