Tim Sullivan, a novelist and book reviewer who also wrote, directed and/or starred in several microbudget horror and science-fiction films, has died. He was 76.

Sullivan died Sunday of congestive heart failure in hospice in Newport News, Virginia, John R. Ellis, a friend of his for 50 years, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Sullivan starred as a military pilot who survives a worldwide plague and battles giant mutant spiders in the Ellis-directed sci-fi thriller Twilight of the Dogs (1995). He and Ellis teamed on the screenplay as well.

He also wrote and directed Vampyre Femmes (1999) and appeared in such straight-to-video releases as The Laughing Dead (1989), Eyes of the Werewolf (1999), The Mark of Dracula (2000), Hollywood Mortuary (2000) and Deadly Scavengers (2001), working often with writer-director Ron Ford.

Sullivan wrote at least seven sci-fi novels during his career, three of them based on Kenneth Johnson’s V NBC miniseries and series in the mid-1980s about an alien invasion of Earth.