“This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.”

American author, journalist, and poet

Ambrose Bierce was an American author, journalist, and poet. He was a prolific writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known for his sharp literary style and his influence on American journalism and fiction. He wrote realist fiction, horror, satire, war stories, and poetry, and was also known as a forceful literary critic. His work later won broader recognition for its range, especially his fiction and poems, while his war writing influenced later writers such as Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway.