Morton was born in Pasadena, California, and entered the film industry in 1979 as a modelmaker on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
In 2009, she edited the anthology Midnight Walk, and her first novella, The Lucid Dreaming, was published by Bad Moon Books and went on to win the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction.
Her second novella, The Samhanach, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction, and was named the top pick in the 2011 reviewer poll by Monster Librarian.
[7] Her 2017 Halloween-themed anthology Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
Her non-fiction articles have appeared in such books as The Art of Horror (2015), The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (2015), Birthing Monsters: Frankenstein’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Cruelties (2018),[14] and It’s Alive: Bringing Your Nightmares to Life (2018).