Christopher PikeChristopher Pike is the pen name of best selling YA author Kevin Christopher McFadden. He was born November 12, 1955 in New York City, but grew up in California, where he currently resides in Santa Barbara with his girlfriend, Abir. He writes a shitload of crazy stuff that has entertained readers for decades and has inspired many of your favourite authors and filmmakers.
Before becoming an author, Pike attended college but dropped out to take on a series of jobs including house painting, factory work and computer programming.
His early efforts at fiction were largely adult mysteries and science fiction, and at an editor's suggestion he tried his hand at YA suspense. Slumber Party was the result, and it became his first published novel. School libraries around the world had no idea what they were in for.
Quickly Pike became one of the biggest selling authors of YA fiction alongside R.L. Stine. Young adult horror in the 90s was a phenomenon not unlike the Harry Potter craze to follow years later, and while Pike and Stine were at the forefront of this movement, Pike's work was considered more edgy and mature. Kids doing drugs! Drinking beer! Having sex! Killing each other! Being ancient alien lizard people!
He has written more than 50 books for teens, many for juveniles (the Spooksville series) and several for adults, including The Season of Passage and The Cold One. Pike's YA novel Fall Into Darkness was adapted into a mediocre TV movie (1996) starring Tatyana M. Ali and Jonathan Brandis; Pike was displeased with the results and this is partly why we haven't seen much of his work on the screen since then. Spooksville, nevertheless, was adapted as a television series for the Hub network in 2013. Other works have been optioned by such filmmakers as Wes Craven, and The Midnight Club is slated to become a TV series on Netflix, helmed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep).
Christopher Pike?Pike is perhaps best known for his Last Vampire series of novels (later rebranded Thirst and given mind-numbingly bland covers in comparison to those killer vibrant pulpy paintings they used in the 90s).
In the early 2000s, Pike was involved in a serious car crash, which slowed his writing for a period. He has since returned to writing and publishing books, among them Witch World, Strange Girl and the continuing stories of Sita the vampire in the Thirst saga.
His hobbies have included astronomy, running and meditation. Early in his career, he was also known to make sure his books were prominently displayed in local bookshops.
Though relatively reclusive, he can sometimes be found replying to comments and posting updates on his official fan-run Facebook page.
Pike's pseudonym comes from the first Captain of the Starship Enterprise, which was a little known fact until J.J. Abrams brought it to everyone's attention.
