"You're the reason I'm here!"

Those are the first words a seventeen-year-old me said to Ramsey Campbell at a convention in Swansea. I had discovered the works of Ramsey in our local library a few years before. Prior to that I had been devouring the horror standards - James Herbert, Dean Koontz, Richard Laymon - but it was Ramsey's work that cracked my impressionable young brain wide open. The collection was Waking Nightmares and the story that froze me with terror with its very last line was "The Trick." I had no idea that horror could do that, and what Ramsey taught me was that good horror fiction could be up there with the best of anything in any genre. Good horror had literary merit. Ramsey made me want to be a writer.

At that convention in Swansea, Ramsey sat and chatted with me as he signed my books. He was gracious and kind, and patient with an anxiety-ridden young fan. When I did my BA dissertation on horror, I interviewed Ramsey and he and Jenny were so hospitable, inviting me to their house where Ramsey submitted himself to an hours' long interview. (I still have the actual cassettes somewhere).

Ramsey is, and always will be, one of my very favourite writers of horror fiction. He is a master of unease, he can induce dread just in the way characters talk to each other. He is also one of the most generous, open, and kind authors I know, keen to celebrate the genre he clearly loves while championing the new writers that continue in the footsteps of his extraordinary legacy.

Happy Anniversary, Ramsey.

I owe you a great great deal. You lit the blue touch paper that set me off on a career that I love.

Jonathan Oliver, Award winning editor of House of Fear, End of The Line, and Magic and author of The Language of Beasts