Rocky Wood is an award-nominated writer known for his books about horror author Stephen King. Wood is based in Melbourne, Australia and has been a freelance writer for 30 years. His writing career began at university, where he wrote a national newspaper column in New Zealand on UFO-related phenomena and published other articles about the phenomenon worldwide; and had articles on the security industry published in the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and South Africa.
In the Stephen King and horror communities, Rocky Wood is regarded as a leading expert on Stephen King’s work. He is the co-author of The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King (Kanrock Partners, 2003, 2004); Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2006); The Stephen King Collector's Guide (Kanrock Partners, 2007 ); and Stephen King: The Non-Fiction (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2009). Wood has also written many articles on King that have appeared in such magazines as Cemetery Dance, Dark Discoveries, and Lighthouse.
Wood was keynote speaker at the 2003 Stephen King (SKEMER) Conference held in Estes Park, Colorado at the site of the hotel that featured in The Shining (2003); Continuum 3 (2005), Continuum 4 (2006) and Continuum 5 (2009) in Melbourne, Australia; Conflux in Canberra, Australia (2006); and at the Stephen King film festival(Dollar Baby Film Festival) held in King’s hometown of Bangor, Maine in October 2005. He also addressed the Lisbon Historical Society in Lisbon Falls, Maine twice in July 2009 about inspirations from Stephen King's later childhood and teenage years in Durham, Maine and attending Lisbon High School.
In 2002, he traveled to Orono, Maine and spent three weeks researching the Stephen King Archives at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H Fogler Library at the University of Maine.
His first King book was The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King, a 6000+ page encyclopedia on CD-ROM, which summarizes every story, every character, every place, and the entire timeline of King's work. In-depth information on all 270+ fiction works by Stephen King, 26,000 King characters, and 5,000 King places are included, along with adaptations of King’s work to the big and small screens. The Guide is even used by Stephen King's office for research For Immediate Release.
In his research, Wood rediscovered previously unknown King stories, including two written in his high school years, of which even the author did not have a copy . King agreed to allow the inclusion of another two previously unpublished pieces, Sword in the Darkness and Dino Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished: Cemetery Dance Publications in Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished. That book covered nearly 100 King stories that had never been published or appeared only in obscure venues.
In 2005, he returned to Maine for a lengthy investigative trip into King’s non-fiction, discovering over 40 previously unknown pieces, again including lost material from King’s formative years, which he later provided to the author. King agreed to the inclusion of an obscure article, My Little Serrated Security Blanket in Wood's Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, which covers more than 600 individual items. Wood returned to Maine in both 2007, 2008 and 2009 to continue his research. In 2008/9 he wrote the 'King of Horror' column in the Australian magazine, 'Black: Australian Dark Culture' .
His first mainstream fiction was published in 2010 in a graphic novel, Horrors! Great Tales of Fear and Their Creators (McFarland), a re-imagination of events in 19th century horror, illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne.
Rocky Wood is an Active member and Trustee of the Horror Writers Association (HWA), serving a two-year term from 1 November 2008,. He was nominated for the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction for Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished (2006) and Stephen King: The Non-Fiction (2009). He is a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association. He is Guest Judge (Edited Publications) for the Australian Shadows Award, 2010.
He was President of the Australian American Association (Victoria) in Australia from 2008—2010; and is a member of the Australian Logistics Council.
Throughout his career, Wood has made many media appearances on TV, radio, and in the press, and has spoken at conferences in the US, Canada, UK, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Australia, and New Zealand.
