An original Monster Kid, Ian McDowell grew up in Fayetteville, NC, where he watched Shock Theater hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer (of later Creature Features fame), lived for the semi-annual new issue of Castle of Frankenstein, and borrowed masks and books from his neighbor Tom Savini

Ian the author of the novels Mordred's Curse and Merlin's Gift.  His fiction has appeared in Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and the anthologies Love in Vein, October Dreams 2 and the Science Fiction Book Club's Best Short Novels 2005. He currently lives in Greensboro, NC. In February of 2020, he won first prize in investigative journalism at the North Carolina Press Association Awards for his coverage of the case of Marcus Deon Smith, an African-American man fatally hogtied by the Greensboro police during the 2018 NC Folk Festival. That same month, his Alphabestiary: 26 Poems and Drawings for Easily Alarmed Children and the Adults Who Like to Alarm Them, was published by AM INK.