Everson was born in 1966 and spent most of his childhood in
Tinley Park, Illinois. He graduated from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in
journalism in 1988 and worked for two years at
The Star Newspapers in Chicago Heights, IL, where he began the weekly music review column "Pop Stops." He wrote this column for the newspaper for nearly 20 years, even after leaving
The Star as a full-time reporter to serve as an editor for the
Illinois Entertainer magazine for four years. His first two novels feature a reporter, Joe Kieran, as the lead character, drawing on his experience in journalism. In 2000, his first collection of short fiction,
Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions, appeared from
Delirium Books, which also released his first novel,
Covenant, in 2004.
Covenant was reissued by mass market paperback publisher
Leisure Books in 2008, which also reissued the sequel
Sacrifice in 2009 as well as his next two novels,
The 13th and
Siren. His fifth novel,
The Pumpkin Man was released by Leisure's parent company,
Dorchester Publishing. After more than 1,000 Dorchester Publishing titles were acquired by Amazon Publishing in 2012, Everson's first five novels were re-issued by Amazon's 47North imprint. That same year, his sixth novel,
NightWhere, was issued by Samhain Publishing, which also released his subsequent novels
Violet Eyes and
The Family Tree. In 2013, Everson was commissioned by Amazon Publishing to help launch its new Kindle Worlds portal, which aimed to monetize
fan fiction by licensing popular fictional worlds and opening them for writers to work in. Everson wrote a novelette in the
Vampire Diaries world entitled "Witch Trapped.". Everson also contributed two stories to the
V-Wars book series created and edited by Jonathan Maberry and published by IDW Publishing. His stories "Love Less" (from
V-Wars, 2012) and "Love Lost" (from
V-Wars: Night Terrors, 2015) created the characters of vampire sisters Danika and Mila Dubov, who appear in the first season of the Netflix series
V-Wars, which debuted on Dec. 5, 2019. In addition to writing, Everson is the publisher of Dark Arts Books, which has released a dozen anthologies and single author collections since 2006. In 2008, the Dark Arts Books anthology
Like A Chinese Tattoo was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award in the Anthology category. Everson lives with his wife Geri and son Shaun in
Naperville, Illinois. ==Awards and nominations==