Yvonne Wisdom is of Puerto Rican and Jamaican descent, and is fluent in English, Spanish and E.V.P. She was born in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, where she lived until she was eight. Then she moved to Cuba when her father, a navy man, was stationed in Guantanamo Bay. As a young girl, she loved watching old horror movies with her dad, who somehow managed to ignore her perpetual prodding, “Does he die?”
Yvonne always found herself immersed in the story, unable to stand back and watch as if from a distance. Her sister Eileen often took advantage of this horrific rapture, reaching out from under the couch to grab her ankle. She had the unsettling experience of watching Psycho for the first time while staying at a Bates-like motel. When the family got home, Yvonne decided to take a shower. Suddenly, Eileen yanked back the curtain and attacked her sister with razor-sharp banana.
Working at a retail counter at Sears, Yvonne became a volunteer storyteller at her son’s elementary school, dreaming of someday becoming an author of children’s books. She got a job at the Orange County Library in Windermere, where she picked up a collection of science fiction stories and found a whole new universe to explore. One day a kid started following her around the place, acting up and finally throwing a book at her. Yvonne was amazed at his bad behavior, and from then on, her literary tastes got progressively darker. She started reading stories by Stephen King and Clive Barker, enjoying anthologies gathered according to a common theme, such as Obsessions and Psychos.
Now Yvonne writes dark fantasy and horror stories of her own, grouping them into her own thematic collections. Her first story, “Jack Splat,” was written as a tribute to Peter Cushing and his Hammer horror films that she had enjoyed so much as a child.
A self-confessed neat freak, Yvonne lives in Orlando with her son Sebastian. When she’s not working, she likes to watch movies — often foreign or obscure independent films — that depict the human drama of people in peril. She is looking forward to writing all the time and having the time to enjoy it. She enjoys going to conventions and welcomes people to come up to her for a chat — you never know, she might turn it into a story.
