Janet Kaye Fox was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 and horror writer, poet, teacher, and founder-editor-publisher of the now-defunct Scavenger's Newsletter. She lived in Osage City

Osage City, Kansas

Osage City is a city in Osage County, Kansas, United States. The population was 3,034 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Topeka, Kansas Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:Osage City is located at...

, Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

.

Career

Fox spent fifteen years as a teacher of English and foreign language at Osage City High School, and a number of years after as an instructor for Writer's Digest School. She has served as secretary/treasurer of the Small Press Writers and Artists' Organization, as well as issuing a newsletter for the group, afterwards establishing Scavenger's Newsletter, a monthly market letter for "SF/Fantasy/Horror/Mystery writers and artists with an interest in the small press" published from 1984 to 2003.

Fox's writing career has extended from 1970 through the present, with her work appearing in professional and small press publications. Most of Fox's book length fiction has been written as Alex McDonough, the shared pseudonym under which Ace Books

Ace Books

Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns...

's six-volume "Scorpio" series was issued in the early 1990s. She wrote all but the first volume. She has also written, under her own name, the novel A Witch's Dozen (2005) and numerous short stories and poems.

Her short fiction has appeared in Borderland, Cemetery Dance, Collage, Crossroads, Dark Regions, Dead of Night, Eldritch Tales, Eternity, Fantastic

Fantastic (magazine)

Fantastic was an American digest-size fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1952 to 1980. It was founded by Ziff-Davis as a fantasy companion to Amazing Stories. Early sales were good, and Ziff-Davis quickly decided to switch Amazing from pulp format to digest, and to cease...

, Fantasy Book, Grue, The Horror Show, Infinitum, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine was a quarterly fantasy magazine founded and initially edited by fantasy and science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Fifty issues appeared from summer 1988 through December 2000. It was published by MZB Enterprises from 1988-1989, Marion Zimmer Bradley...

, Metamorphoses, New Blood, Shadow Sword, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Tales as Like as Not, Tales of the Unanticipated, Twilight Zone, 2AM FII, The Urbanite, Weirdbook, Whispers, and such anthologies as All the Devils Are Here (David D. Deyo, Jr., ed., 1986), Amazons!

Amazons!

Amazons! is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, with a cover and frontispiece by Michael Whelan. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in December 1979, and was the first significant fantasy anthology of works featuring female protagonists by female...

(Jessica Amanda Salmonson, ed., 1979), Best of the Horror Show (David B. Silva, ed., 1987), Burning With a Vision (Robert Frazier, ed., 1984), The Definitive Best of the Horror Show (David B. Silva, ed., 1992), Dragon Tales (Isaac Asimov, et al., eds., 1982), Fantasy Tales #6 (Stephen Jones, et al., eds., 1991), Fears (Charles L. Grant, ed., 1983), The Giant Book of Fantasy Tales (Stephen Jones, et al., eds., 1996), Horrorstory Volume Three (Karl Edward Wagner, ed., 1992), Midnight (Charles L. Grant, ed., 1985), 100 Fiendish Little Frightmares (Stefan Dziemianowicz, et al., eds., 1997), 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories (Isaac Asimov, et al., ed., 1984), 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment (Stefan Dziemianowicz, et al., eds., 1998), 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories (Stefan Dziemianowicz, et al., eds., 1995), Post Mortem: New Tales of Ghastly Horror (Paul F. Olson, et al., eds., 1989), Shadows #2

Shadows (anthology)

Shadows was a series of horror anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant, published by Doubleday from 1978 to 1991. Grant, a proponent of "quiet horror", initiated the series in order to offer readers a showcase of this kind of fiction. The short stories appearing in the Shadows largely dispensed...

(Charles L. Grant, ed., 1979), Shadows #9

Shadows (anthology)

Shadows was a series of horror anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant, published by Doubleday from 1978 to 1991. Grant, a proponent of "quiet horror", initiated the series in order to offer readers a showcase of this kind of fiction. The short stories appearing in the Shadows largely dispensed...

(Charles L. Grant, ed., 1986), Sword and Sorceress #1

Sword and Sorceress series

The Sword and Sorceress series is a series of fantasy anthologies edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and originally published by DAW Books. As she explained in the foreword to the first volume, she created the anthology to redress the lack of strong female protagonists in the sub-genre of sword and...

(Marion Zimmer Bradley, ed., 1984), Sword and Sorceress #5

Sword and Sorceress series

The Sword and Sorceress series is a series of fantasy anthologies edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and originally published by DAW Books. As she explained in the foreword to the first volume, she created the anthology to redress the lack of strong female protagonists in the sub-genre of sword and...

(Marion Zimmer Bradley, ed., 1988), Tales by Moonlight II (Jessica Amanda Salmonson, ed., 1989), Voices from the Night (John Maclay, ed., 1994), When the Black Lotus Blooms (Elizabeth A. Saunders, ed., 1990), The Year's Best Fantasy Stories #5

The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 5

The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 5 is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in January, 1980...

(Lin Carter, ed., 1980), The Year's Best Horror Stories

The Year's Best Horror Stories

The Year’s Best Horror Stories was a series of annual anthologies published by DAW Books from 1971 to 1994 under the successive editorships of Richard Davis from 1971 to 1973, and, after a two year hiatus, Gerald W. Page from 1976 to 1979, and Karl Edward Wagner from 1980 to 1994. The series was...

: Series VI (Gerald W. Page, ed., 1978), and The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VII (Gerald W. Page, ed., 1979).

Her poetry has appeared in Critical Mass, Dreams & Nightmares, Eldritch Tales, Fungi FII, Grue, Nøctulpa, Nyctalops, Owlflight, Paradox, The Tome, 2AM, Star*Line, Weird Tales

Weird Tales

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

, and such anthologies as Aliens & Lovers (Millea Kenin, ed., 1983), Burning with a Vision (Robert Frazier, ed., 1984), and Once Upon a Midnight (Jame A. Riley et al., eds., 1995).

Scorpio series

• Scorpio (as Alex McDonough) (1990)
• Scorpio Rising (as Alex McDonough) (1990)
• Scorpio Descending (as Alex McDonough) (1991)
• Dragon's Blood (as Alex McDonough) (1991)
• Dragon's Eye (as Alex McDonough) (1992)
• Dragon's Claw (as Alex McDonough) (1993)

Short stories

• "Materialist" (1970)
• "Say It with Spiders" (1970)
• "The Miraculous God Machine" (1971)
• "The Lord Loved Little People" (1972)
• "A Witch in Time" (1973)
• "She-Bear" (1974)
• "Screaming to Get Out" (1977)
• "Intimately, With Rain" (1978)
• "Demon and Demoiselle" (1978)
• "Valentine" (1979)
• "Morrien's Bitch" (1979)
• "Answer Came There None" (1980)
• "How Jaquerel Fell Prey to Ankarrah" (1980)
• "The Name Unspeakable in Tel Urath" (1980)
• "Garage Sale" (1982)
• "How Jaquerel Learned to Let Sleeping Gods Lie" (1982)
• "Small Magic" (1982)
• "Witches" (1983)
• "Surrogate" (1983)
• "In the Kingdom of the Thorn" (1983)
• "Clown Black" (1984)
• "Gate of the Damned" (1984)
• "The Ghost-Winder" (1984)
• "Immortality and Mrs. Mundy" (1984)
• "Christobel" (1985)
• "Taking Care of Bertie" (1985)
• "To a Crow, All Crows are White" (1985)
• "Cille’s World" (1986)
• "Cradle Robbers" (1986)
• "The Skins You Love to Touch" (1986)
• "The Umbrella" (1986)
• "Mirror Trick" (1987)
• "Strands" (1987)
• "When Jaquerel Walked with Shadows" (1987)
• "Eyes of the Laemi" (1988)
• "Heirloom" (1988)
• "Getting Miss Grisley" (1988)
• "The Man Who Loved the Wizard’s Son" (1988)
• "Dream Journey" (1989)
• "The Servitor" (1989)
• "Late Bloomer" (1990)
• "The Saturday Morning Horrors" (1990)
• "The Unicorn Girl" (1990)
• "The Dragon Business" (with Kevin J. Anderson
  Kevin J. Anderson
  Kevin J. Anderson is an American science fiction author with over forty bestsellers. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequels...
  
  ) (1991)
• "How Jaquerel Made War in Bel Azhurra" (1991)
• "The Kirkhall Legacy" (1992)
• "The Bloodfruit" (1993)
• "Hey Mom" (1994)
• "The Bug Boy" (1995)

Poems

• "O Slapstick Buddha" (1978)
• "Quotella" (1981)
• "Institutions" (1982)
• "Two Poems" (1982)
• "In the First Month of Becoming" (1983)
• "Death" (1983)
• "As the Wind Improvised" (1984)
• "Insomniac" (1985)
• "Cthulhu of the Webbed Cross" (1986)
• "Haiku" (1986)
• "To Love the Dark" (1986)
• "Untitled" (1986)
• "Hard Knight’s Work" (1988)
• "Like an old wizard..." (1988)
• "Nocturnal ... Elisions" (1988)
• "Some Kind of Monster" (1988)
• "That Maniac Upstairs" (1988)
• "The Time Barrier" (1988)
• "Telepathy" (1988)
• "When We Lived in the Cemetery" (1988)
• "Willow Woman Walks" (1988)
• "All the Black Crayons" (1989)
• "Ledger" (1990)
• "Under Jennie’s Bed" (1990)
• "Untitled" (“Fading in and out of intermittent...”) (1990)
• “"Untitled ("Neon in vomet green...”) (1990)
• "(____)" (1991)
• "Bag Lady's Ghost" (1995)
• "Time as a Closet" (1995)

Articles

• "Janet Fox" (1982)
• "Other Side of the Desk" (1987)
• "Overview of Horror, SF and Fantasy: A Long-range Market Study" (1987)

External links

• Scavenger's Newsletter website, now defunct (link courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine]
• Autobiographical sketch at the former Scavenger's Newsletter website