John Howard is an English author, born in London in 1961. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and the collections The Silver Voices, Written by Daylight, and Cities and Thrones and Powers. The majority of Howard's stories have central and eastern European settings; many are set in the fictional Romanian town of Steaua de Munte. The Defeat of Grief is a novella set in Steaua de Munte and the real Black Sea resort of Balcic; Numbered as Sand or the Stars attempts a 'secret history' of Hungary between the World Wars. Secret Europe is a collection jointly written with Mark Valentine comprising 25 short stories set in a variety of real and fictional European locations. Ten of the stories are by Howard and fifteen by Valentine. The expanded edition published in 2014 added an introduction and an extra story by Mark Valentine. Between 2003 and 2007 John Howard collaborated on eight short stories with Mark Valentine, six of which featured Valentine's long-running series character The Connoisseur, an occult detective whose real name is never revealed. All 23 tales of The Connoisseur, including the collaborations, were reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur. 

January 1st, 1961 in (Age 63)