A writer specializing in the horror genre, Mort Castle ’68 recently announced that his work, The Strangers, has been adapted into a screenplay for a movie by Whitewater Films.
The Strangers presents Michael Louden, who is, in Castle’s words, “your ever-so-average nice guy, your neighbor, your friend–except he wants to kill you and your family and your dog. It’s the story of the next door serial psycho, a Jack the Ripper in Willy Loman’s well shined shoes–and there are thousands more just like him, waiting for their time to kill.”
Upon its initial release in 1984, The Strangers was heralded as “one great scary book” by The Star, Chicago Publishing Group/Hollinger Newspapers. Castle maintains the story is even more suited to today’s terror times.
While an English undergraduate at Illinois State, Castle published his first novel in 1967. Since then, he’s published seven novels, two short story collections and hundreds of shorter works in magazines and publications such as Oyez Review, Firelands Arts Review, Mike Shayne Mystery magazine, The Writer, and in anthologies such as Adventures of the Batman and in all five volumes of the renowned Masques series (Castle is the only living author to have that distinction).
Castle is currently a full-time writer and freelance language arts consultant. He serves as writer in residence for two high schools and is an adjunct faculty member of the fiction writing department at Chicago’s Columbia College. Mort and his wife of 34 years, Jane, reside in Crete, Ill.
