Weston Ochse (1965-2023)

Author Weston Ochse, 58, died in November 18, 2023 in Tucson AZ after a long period of poor health. Ochse was best known as a horror and military SF writer.

Ochse was born June 20, 1965 in Gillette WY, and grew up all over the US, graduating from high school in Chattanooga TN. He then enlisted in the US Army, becoming an intelligence officer, and served until 2004. He attended Excelsior University as an undergrad, and earned his MFA in creative writing from National University. He taught writing at Cochise Community College and Southern New Hampshire University, and ran the Guerrilla Fiction Writing Workshop online. He was married to author Yvonne Navarro, who survives him.

Ochse began publishing genre stories with “Holy Ghost Hit Parade” (1999). Some of his short fiction was collected in Multiplex Fandango (2011), and his collections with David Whitman are Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors (2000) and Appalachian Galapagos (2003).

Debut novel Scarecrow Gods appeared in 2005, and won a Bram Stoker Award. Other works include SEAL Team 666 series, starting with SEAL Team 666 (2012); the military SF Task Force Ombra series beginning with Grunt Life (2014); the Sky series, starting with Burning Sky (2018). Standalones include The Tomes of the Dead: Empire of Salt (2010), Velvet Dogma (2011), Ghost Heart (2014, with with Yvonne Navarro), Halfway House (2014), Bone Chase (2020), and Red Unicorn (2022). He wrote Blood Ocean (2012) in the Afterblight Chronicles shared world, and authored tie-ins, including in the Alien vs Predator world. He also wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A 21st Century Modernization (2021).

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.