ABSTRACT

Thomas "Tom" F. Monteleone is a 79-year-old author, essayist and publisher of horror and science fiction literature.
In 2023, due to his conservative, Christian ethos, Tom was mercilessly cancelled by woke influencers within his professional peer group at the Horror Writers Association (HWA), the very organization that Tom helpd to co-found nearly 40 years earlier (1985).

We are seeking funding aid on GiveSendGo due to the cancellation of Tom's career and business by a rabidly woke publishing industry that “canceled” him mercilessly with savage attacks and financial retribution. The damage to Tom's reputation and his business began in 2023.

CAREER HISTORY

Tom began his career as a professional writer in 1972 by selling his first short story to a magazine called Amazing Science Fiction. Since then, he has published more than 100 short stories, 100+ articles and columns, 30 novels, 6 collections of his own short fiction, 9 anthologies and 2 books of non-fiction.

During his 55 year career, Tom has received 5 Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in the following categories: Novel, Anthology, Collection, and Non-Fiction.

The Bram Stoker Award is conferred to writers by the Horror Writers Association (HWA. Inc.)—a group of professional writers and editors founded in 1987 with Dean Koontz as its first President.   Tom was an original member and served as its 2nd Vice President under Charles Grant. 

In 2017, the HWA proudly honored Tom with their Lifetime Achievement Award for his esteemed professional accomplishments as a genre writer and publisher.

In 1989, Tom established BORDERLANDS PRESS (BP), a small publishing company specializing in signed, limited editions of works by well-know, popular, and collectible authors.  During the past 36 years, BP has published hundreds of titles, including the works of such writers as Stephen King, Peter Straub, Joe Lansdale, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Ligotti, Robert McCammon, Harlan Ellison, Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, Charles Grant, Dennis Etchison and many more wonderful writers.

In 1990, Tom published his first anthology (called BORDERLANDS) of all-original horror short stories by a good mix of new and well-known writers and it went on to be a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Two of the stories from that volume won Bram Stoker Awards for Best Short Story and Best Novelette.

Since then, Tom has edited and published 6 additional volumes of his anthology series, with Borderlands 5 and Borderlands 6 winning Bram Stoker Awards for Best Anthology.

In addition to success in publishing, Tom and his wife, Elizabeth, created the annual Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp. After accepting applications and writing samples from more than 100 annual applicants, they selected 24 participants to undergo a grueling 3-day weekend of instruction and criticism. Each year, they employed well-known, professional, award-winning writers to be guest instructors (such as Peter Straub, David Morrell, F Paul Wilson, Douglas Winter, Gary Braunbeck, Mort Castle, Jack Ketchum, Beth Massie, et al). The results were astounding: Over the course of almost 20 years of Boot Camps, more than 300 attendees went on to varying degrees of publishing success from selling a short stories to publishing novels and winning awards.

CAREER DAMAGE
Everything was going well for Tom until 2023 when he questioned some alarming new agendas the were creeping into the management of HWA.   Tom had long known a substantial number of members were politically 'left of center', but when a group of them came to positions of authority in HWA, they began making public statements claiming that the august body of the HWA now supported radical political causes like Black Lives Matter, Right to Choose, Open Borders, Climate Change, Pride Month and the rest of the “progressive” agenda. And they did this by fiat—never polling the membership on any of the above issues.

This was the sad turning point where Tom's peer group waged a concerted effort to destroy his reputation. This included many former friends, colleagues and business partners.

In a letter to the HWA (circa March 2023), in which Tom had nominated his colleague Stuart Schiff for a Lifetime Achievement Award, he sarcastically commented that he "felt compelled to do so (nominate Schiff) even though he was just another smart, old, white guy.”   Tom also mentioned an apparent shift in HWA's annual awards into the territory of DEI pandering.  This did not go well with Awards Committee chair, who would not publish Tom's letter on the HWA website nor in its online newsletter.

So, Tom decided to publish it to his Facebook page with a reach of nearly 5,000 friends. He was surprised to see the post elicit hundreds of responses equally divided between supporting his observations and those excoriating them. Since it was his personal FB page, Tom responded in defense of his own positions, and in the course of interchanges, expressed his contention that "men cannot get pregnant" and that he "would never be bullied into referring anyone as by imaginary pronoun identities” and that he found people who told him their pronouns to be fatuous at best. He also questioned the credentials of some of the writers recently chosen to receive HWA's Lifetime Achievement Award, suggesting that race, sex, and/or ethnicity had skewed some of the Committee’s choices.

The people who disagreed with Tom pounced on his FB post with anger and ferocity.  He was denounced as a racist, sexist, transphobe and all the rest of the woke mob's denigrations and depredations.   He gallantly defended his positions and finally tiring of the exchanges, left his detractors to their own devices.

One evening after this, Tom was contacted by a conservative podcast host, inviting him onto his show to discuss the events which led to all the attacks on him. At one point in his testimony, Tom mentioned that a female member of HWA was writing a blog entitled STOKER SO WHITE.  Tom questioned how she had been "getting away with it" (her own blatant racism) without being accused of publishing a "racist screed". Within a few hours the punishment began and it continued for months:

1) Tom was banned from the HWA for “violating their harassment policies” even though my words and opinions had appeared nowhere on any HWA venue—convention, newsletter, online website or its Facebook page. They attempted (but failed) to revoke his Lifetime Achievement Award and banned him from ever attending any future HWA events.

2) The publisher of Tom's eBooks (over 100 titles) canceling his publishing agreement. This not only ended his own income but also harmed royalties for 80+ other titles/authors who were innocent parties in this hysteria.

3) Half of the authors Tom had selected for the next anthology (Borderlands 8) contacted him and said they were withdrawing their work for publication because they no longer could afford to be associated with him.

4) Several writers Tom had contracted to edit upcoming volumes of the long-running “Little Books” series similarly canceled their agreements for same reasons as #3.

5) Several loyal book dealers quickly canceled their agreements with Borderlands, reducing income by 50%.

6) About 25% of Borderlands' customers asked to be removed from their newsletter mailing list.

7) Tom's literary agent "ghosted" him without any explanation and even attempted to withhold royalties until a publisher forced his hand.

8) Tom was lambasted by The Daily Beast and several other media outlets, all hurling the typical slurs of ‘phobes and ‘isms.

9) Anonymous hackers continue to add smears to Tom's Wikipedia page.

Tom was stunned at the amount of vitriol and abject desire to destroy his life.

Three years into this nightmare, Borderlands is on the brink of financial insolvency.

FINANCIAL NEEDS

We are seeking a target funding of $100,000 to provide

a) legal resources to seek damages from former industry supply-chain partners for tortious interference and libel and

b) publishing expenses for two (2) upcoming projects: the anthology series “Borderlands 8” and retrospective series “Little Books VI".

 PROJECTS  2026        AUTHORS    PRINT        EDIT          TOTAL

BORDERLANDS 8     $12,000      $ 10,000        $5,000      $27,000

LITTLE BOOKS VI          n/a          $ 28,000        $4,000      $32,000

TOTAL FUNDING         $12,000      $ 38,000        $9,000     $59,000

IN CLOSING

Tom recently began a Substack blog to re-introduce himself and his writings to a receptive new audience. https://substack.com/@thomasfmonteleone

Thank you for your consideration in assisting Borderlands Press (www.borderlandspress.com) with donations to begin the legal battle necessary to achieve victory over his attackers and to restore Borderlands Press to the reliably profitable entity that supported Tom's family for 4 decades.

May God bless you.

Nicholas Psaltos

PS:  A RECENT COMPARABLE OF HOW THE GREATER INDUSTRY OF FICTION HAS BEEN DESTROYED BY WOKENESS.....

One of the most popular TV franchises in science fiction history is STAR TREK.

This franchise, owned by Paramount, just premiered (1/15/2026) a spin-off series called STARFLEET ACADEMY. This program has been widely panned by critics for its gender-bending and DEI plot-lines. There is no sadder example of the destruction to our entertainment culture than the hijacking and perversion of our beloved STAR TREK. Several of my colleagues (now deceased) were script writers for the original series, a venerated American institution. They would not recognize the lazy, politicized dreck that now bears the trademark.

Here is a scathing review of STARFLEET ACADEMY that ran in The American Spectator just a few days ago (1/18/2026): https://spectator.org/starfleet-academy-to-boldly-go-nowhere .

This should bring into focus the destruction of both the Publishing and FILM industries.

#BorderlandsPress
#Monteleone
#TomMonteleone
#HorrorWritersAssociation
#Horror
#BramStokerAwards