[2] While he has achieved some acclaim as a novelist, it is Etchison's work in the short story format that is especially well-regarded by critics and genre fans, as with his debut collection The Dark Country (1982) selected as one of the 100 best horror books.

An only child, the earliest years of his life were spent growing up in a household devoid of men (World War II was still raging across the globe).

His passion for the sport continued to the end of his life, and he often wrote under the pen name "The Pro" for the wrestling publication Rampage.

[citation needed] He then remembered Ray Bradbury once suggesting that a writer should start by submitting their work to the least likely market.

So he submitted his short story to a gentlemen's magazine called Escapade, and, a few weeks later, he received their acceptance and a check for $125.

He attended UCLA film school in the 1960s and has written many screenplays as yet unproduced, from his own works as well as those of Ray Bradbury ("The Fox and the Forest") and Stephen King ("The Mist").

He rewrote a Colin Wilson script, The Ogre, and completed a screenplay based on his own short story "The Late Shift".

A film, "Killing Time", was made by Patrick Aumont and Damian Harris (Graymatter Productions) from Etchison's story "The Late Shift".

However, franchise producer Moustapha Akkad rejected the Etchison script, calling it "too cerebral" and insisting that any new Halloween sequel must feature Myers as a flesh and blood killer.

Etchison said, "I received a call from Debra Hill and she said, 'Dennis, I just wanted you to know that John and I have sold our interest in the title 'Halloween' and unfortunately, your script was not part of the deal.

Etchison's fiction has appeared regularly since 1961 in a wide range of publications including Cavalier, The Oneota Review, Rogue, Seventeen, Statement, Fantastic Stories, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mystery Monthly, Escapade, Adelina, Comet (Germany), Fiction (France), Universe (France), Fantasy Tales, Weirdbook, Whispers, Fantasy Book and in such anthologies as Orbit, New Writings in SF, Rod Serling's Other Worlds, Prize Stories from Seventeen, The Pseudo-People, and The Future is Now.

Several more collections have been published since, including a career retrospective, Talking in the Dark (2001), which consists of stories personally selected by the author.

He was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for "The Late Shift" (1981), and as well as winning the ward in 1982 for "The Dark Country", has won it since for Best Short Story, for "The Olympic Runner" (1986) and "The Dog Park" (1994).

His other anthologies include the critically acclaimed Cutting Edge (1986), Gathering The Bones (2003) (edited with Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann), and the Masters of Darkness series (three volumes).