[2] He attended college briefly before quitting and working various jobs such as house painting and computer programming.
His first novel, Slumber Party, was written initially as a supernatural thriller containing a character with pyrokinesis (psychic ability to start and control fire), which he later eliminated upon the request of his editor.
The book was then re-written as a mystery thriller about a group of teenagers who encounter bizarre and violent events during a skiing weekend.
[4] He would later publish one more novel through Scholastic, the 1986 Chain Letter, after which he engaged mainly with Simon and Schuster.
His novels The Midnight Club and The Season of Passage have both been optioned, for a television series and movie, by movie-maker Mike Flanagan for Netflix.