Our Authors

Alfred Smith is a father and rowing coach from Erie, Pennsylvania. He found himself telling stories from a young age, and then made the logical step into running Dungeons and Dragons games when he was only 9 years old. He has settled in Erie, Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future with his wife, Emily, his daughter, Hope, and their cat, Lord Squeaky. Alfred has run the Parsec SFF Short Story Contest since 2020. He has been published in Deep Magic Ezine, and several anthologies from Air and Nothingness Press.

Andrea Monticue lives with her wife and their dog in rural Oregon, where she designs spaceships, imagines alien worlds, practices her sword and archery skills, and studies languages, anthropology, math, and music. She’s not very good at any of it, but keeps practicing anyway. She has retired from her life as an interstellar spy and occasionally writes about her adventures and submits them to clueless publishers. Andrea can be found at Memoirs of an Earthling.

Arasibo Campeche is originally from Puerto Rico with a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror that's often inspired by scientific principles. He has several books in progress, but his passion is the short story. His work has appeared in Death in the Mouth Vol. 1, Latinx Screams, Daily Science Fiction, Tales to Terrify, Weirdbook #41, Helios Quarterly Magazine, Dragon Gems (Spring 2023) and Dragon Gems (Fall 2023) anthologies, and several other publications.

Barb Bissonette is a retired medical nurse of forty years at Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Orillia, Ontario. She completed a mission to Dominican Republic with the Sisters of Charity to work among the people living there. She loved nursing, but has always enjoyed reading and writing. As a child, she would write poetry and short stories. Barb belongs to the Muskoka Authors Association. Her favorite person is — and always will be — Lucy Maud Montgomery, the great Canadian author. Barb has had three novels published with Strategic Book Group: Among Little Faces, A Winter Town, and Leave a Light on for Christmas. She has always believed in the everyday magic that lives inside each one of us — the kind of magic that happens when you close your eyes and wish with all your might and believe with all your heart. You can find out more about works and world of Barb Bissonette on her website BarbBissonette.com and her Facebook page Barb Bissonette Writer.

Bob Schoonover is a Navy brat, with a Navy pilot father and Navy WAVE mother. He moved frequently as a child until his father retired and settled in Chico, California in the ’60s. After high school in Chico and attending Occidental College, Bob began his own career in the Navy as a Naval Flight Officer trained for P-3 Orion patrol planes (a land-based aircraft conducting anti-submarine warfare missions and search and rescue). He served at permanent duty stations in Hawaii and San Diego with deployments to the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. Bob met and married his wife, also a Navy officer, in Hawaii. After Bob retired, he followed his wife during the remainder of her career to assignments leading to Newport, Rhode Island where they reside with three cats. During his post-Navy career, Bob has been a house husband to their only child since her age of seven, substitute high school teacher, and a high school track and cross-country coach. Bob is an accomplished watercolor artist and copper wire sculptor of wildlife. He has been a scribbler his whole life and is now writing fiction as a vocation.

Hailing from sunny Sacramento, California, Brian C. E. Buhl is trying to save the world. Formerly enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, Brian now spends most of his time writing software for the solar industry. When he’s not engineering technical solutions, he can sometimes be found playing saxophone with local community bands. Also, he writes science fiction and fantasy.

Brian K. Lowe has been writing since he was fourteen, when he took it up in a sudden burst of sibling rivalry, and wrote a novella which earned him no money, but a fistful of extra credit points in his English class. Since then, he has graduated from UCLA as an English/Creative Writing major, and currently works for an attorney. His short stories have appeared in Escape Pod, Galaxy's Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other venues.

BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic towards a just, regenerative world. She's a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League. Her short fiction is featured in Solarpunk Creatures (World Weaver Press), Bioluminescent (Android Press), and Solarpunk Magazine. She’s known for her teaching in the worldwide pagan community and co-founded the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University that features her workshops and nonfiction. She lives on Lenape territory (Turtle Island/U.S.) with a human, a forest, a labyrinth, the Fey, bees, turtles, fungi, rocks, and many other nonhumans. Visit brightflame.com for musings, doodles, workshops, and more.

Bruce Golden has sold more than a hundred short stories published across a score of countries and three dozen anthologies. His recent novella, Monster Town, a satirical take on the world of the hard-boiled detective — one populated by the monsters of old black and white horror movies — is in development as a television series.

Curtis Bass has more than twenty-five stories appear in online and print venues including Youth Imagination, Page & Spine, Fabula Argentea, a best of 2020 short story anthology, two horror anthologies, and two upcoming young adult anthologies. Curtis enjoys writing because he can let his mind wander free and never knows where it might end up.

Passionate about stories from a young age, Daniel Fliederbaum spent the entirety of their first-grade year too embarrassed of their bad handwriting to pick up a pencil and actually write. When they finally learned about the wonders of digital word processing, they began a life-long love affair with storytelling, spending their elementary, middle, and high school years working on a novel which will hopefully never see the light of day. Now that they have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho, and are earning their Master of Fine Arts, handwriting is far less of an issue. When they aren’t writing, Daniel likes to spend time with friends, with their cat, and gorging themself on a steady diet of young adult fantasy, Japanese anime and Pokémon games.

Diane De Pisa’s early publications include three articles on Black Elk Speaks, the topic of her doctoral dissertation directed by Scott Momaday at UC Berkeley, and twenty poems in several journals. In 2014-2021 the Berkeley Times carried two serialized and condensed works sequentially: a satirical novel titled As Sour Grapes Ripen and her text for photos of Berkeley in the sixties by her late husband titled “Telegraph and Beyond.” De Pisa’s account of grief and recovery, Love of Finished Years, was published by Wipf and Stock in 2021. Her “Bird Tracks: A Pantoum” won a Poetry Society of America award for a surreal poem, and a short story, “Visions Etched in Ice,” earned the grand prize at a Canadian festival. Diane lives in Albany, California. You can find out more about Diane’s works and world at her website, dianedepisa.com.

DJ Cockburn funded his unfortunate writing habit through medical research on various parts of the African continent and drinking a lot of coffee. Earlier phases of his life have included teaching unfortunate children and experimenting on unfortunate fish. In between a steady drizzle of rejections, he’s seen a few stories in venues including Apex, Interzone, and Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction for 2014. His website is at cockburndj.wordpress.com and he has occasionally been caught twittering as @DJ_Cockburn.

Elaine Isaak writes adventure novels inspired by research subjects like medieval surgery, ancient clockworks, and Byzantine mechanical wonders. Published works include Drakemaster (Guardbridge 2022), The "Dark Apostle" series (DAW), and the “Bone Guard” archaeological thrillers. One recent adventure is the interactive superhero novel Skystrike: Wings of Justice, for Choice of Games. While researching her books, she learned how to hunt with a falcon, clear a building of possible assailants, and pull traction on a broken limb. A former adventure guide, Elaine lives and writes in the Granite State. To learn more about her works and world visit her website: RocinanteBooks.com.

Elyse Russell has been writing since she was seven. She loves stories in all forms. When writing, she tends to stick to short stories and graphic novels, and most of her works are speculative in nature. Elyse has had works accepted with Mermaid's Monthly, Hyphen Punk, Crone Girl's Press, Outcast Press, Markosia, Last Girls Club, and more. Her horror graphic novella, The Fell Witch, is an allegory for postpartum depression and will be released in 2022 with Band of Bards comics. When not writing, Elyse enjoys long naps with her cats, reading, and donuts. Also cheese. Learn more about her works and world at her website: elyserussellauthor.squarespace.com.

Emily Wagner is a writer, educator, and former journalist who always questions the “what if?”s of this world, hence her preference for speculative fiction. She is an alumna of the Taos Toolbox writing workshop and two-time honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and two children.

Evan Davies has published a number of short stories, all with a penchant for genre-mashing and tonal incongruity. He is currently working on a full length novel. In his free time, Evan is an avid reader, road-tripper, table-top gamer, amateur boxer, and jiu-jitsu practitioner.

Flavia was born and raised in Arena, a medieval hill town in Calabria, the ancient "instep" of the Italian Peninsula, and studied Classics and European Literature at the University of Naples. She wrote her first short story when she was 12, and ever since then, writing has been the most important thing she does. When she was 28, she came to live in San Francisco, where she learned English by watching children's television programs with her son Adam, then four years old. She loves English as much as she loves Italian, for different reasons but in the same measure. She writes in English and in Italian, she thinks in English and in Italian, and she dreams in English and in Italian. In 1984, she graduated Summa Cum Laude in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, where she also got her Master's Degree. The six years at SFSU were without a doubt the happiest of her life; she remembers those long hours spent in the library with books as a wonderful time spent with dear friends. From a student of Creative Writing at SFSU she went on to become a teacher of Creative Writing, a most rewarding job where she met many young people with a true gift for writing. She was the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. She has taught Italian at the Italian Institute of Language and Culture in San Francisco and in several other schools throughout the Bay Area. She has also worked for many years as a translator and consultant for the Italian Consulate General, specializing in Citizenship applications; another rewarding job where over her fourteen years she has helped hundreds of people of Italian descent reach their goal of reconnecting with the land of their ancestors. She lives in Pacifica, California, right at the edge of the ocean where the continent ends. She can be found at Flavia's Voice.

Fred Waiss was born and raised in Colorado. Once he learned the world-expanding skill of reading, he became permanently addicted. At age ten, his father introduced him to science fiction, and Robert Heinlein in particular, which led to his reading science fiction for pleasure almost exclusively for the next ten years. The "almost" means that he also read Tolkien, Howard, De Camp, and others in the fantasy genre. Like so many science fiction fans, he started writing stories as well as reading them. He lives in Wisconsin along with his brother and one adult peculiar dog. When possible, he writes mostly (but not exclusively) speculative fiction both as short stories and novels. He also writes a blog and other miscellaneous content on his website, www.fgwaiss.com.

Gary Battershell has published speculative fiction in magazines and anthologies for over twenty years. Since 2019, his output has increased significantly. It includes entries in several anthologies, including Imps and Minions, Bodies, and Strangely Funny IX. Magazine publications include stories in The Society of Misfit Stories Presents, The Fifth Di…, and Sci-Fi Lampoon. He is currently working on an Edgar Rice Burroughs-style science fiction novel, tentatively titled Savage World, and awaiting the publication of stories that include another rom-com (this one set against a Cthulhu Mythos background); “Deep Love” will be a part of a 2024 two-volume work, The Necronomi-Romcom published by Transformations by Obsidian Butterfly.

J Dark is a latecomer to the writing profession, but enjoying every moment that life will allow. “The best thing to me is writing a story that someone enjoys. If I've made something fun and entertaining for people, it's a win-win.” J Dark lives with a house full of dreams, three cats, and various friends who occasionally drop by and stay for a while. The author lives in Kansas, where the winds blow all the time, and, if you blink your eyes, the weather changes. You can find out more about the author's work at The Pandemonium.

J. Scott Coatsworth writes stories that subvert expectations, that seek to transform traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something new and unexpected. His writing, whether romance or genre fiction (or a little bit of both), brings a queer energy to his stories, infusing them with love, beauty and power and making them soar. He imagines a world that could be and, in the process, maybe changes the world that is, just a little. A Rainbow Award-winning author, Scott’s debut novel, Skythane, received two awards and an honorable mention. With his husband, Mark, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction, and Other Worlds Ink. Scott is also the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA).

Jay Hartlove is the playwright, director and producer of The Mirror’s Revenge, the musical sequel to the Snow White fable, which had its theatrical run in the San Francisco Bay Area in August 2018 to rave reviews. Jay is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy "Goddess Rising" Trilogy (Goddess Chosen, Goddess Daughter, and Goddess Rising) and the fantasy romance Mermaid Steel. His stories are filled with conspiracies and the supernatural, gods, dreams, angels, and hidden connections. His creative motto is "Dark Secrets Revealed". He loves to take stories where the reader does not expect, with sympathetic villains, heroes with very dark pasts, and lots of plot twists. He turns victims into heroes. He was selected as one of the "50 Authors You Should Be Reading" by The Authors Show. Jay is a former competitive costumer, having won Best in Show at both San Diego ComicCon and WorldCon. You can read more about Jay’s creative adventures, including much of the research he put into his books, at jaywrites.com.

Jo Miles writes optimistic science fiction and fantasy. Their short fiction has appeared in numerous places, including Lightspeed, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and Fireside. Jo is a graduate of the Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox writers’ workshops, and their story “The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea Fish” in Strange Horizons was nominated for a WSFA Small Press Award. Jo lives in Maryland, where they help nonprofits use the internet to save the world, but mostly serve the whims of their two cats. You can find them online at jomiles.com and on Twitter as @josmiles.

Joshua Ramey-Renk has been writing and submitting and publishing for over ahem cough years. His fiction work has appeared in DailyScienceFiction.com and a variety of small press anthologies. He loves reader feedback and might be next to you in a café scribbling away in any one of a myriad of notebooks, scrapbooks, and journals. Joshua lives on the San Francisco Peninsula with his wife and two treat-addicted rescue dogs, Roadie and Pepper.

Kellyn Solvera worked in China, Japan, and near Washington DC. Kellyn now writes and practices primary care medicine in the Pacific Northwest.

Kevin Beckett lives in a Canadian city that is on some nights colder than the planet Mars. At various points in life, he has been a radio show host, a nightclub DJ, and a music promoter, and he now runs social media & promotion for New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine. His previous works include “AKA The Sinner: Games of Dying Men” and “High Road to Hy-Brasil!” published in Hell Hath No Fury from Pro Se Press. He is working on more journeys with Fiddler Cal.

L. A. Jacob (occasionally writing as Jake Logan) has been writing since she could hold a pencil and draw a straight line. She wrote fan fiction before branching out into novels and short stories. After her first book was published, she wrote five more within the span of three years. Interested in magic(k), cards, and divination, She lives in Rhode Island with her son and three cats. She is also the author of Carnival Farm and Real Magic for Writers. You can find out more about L. A. Jacob at her website, lajacob.com.

Laureen Hudson is a writer, publisher, editor, enthusiastic geek enabler, autodidact, activist, and instigator. She has spoken before capacity crowds at engineering conferences, gatherings, and hackfests on the topics of new media, communications, and publication models. She lives aboard a ’47 catamaran with her family and, if she’s not online, it’s probably because she’s crossing an ocean.

Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist with five patents and a background in AI and Internet R&D. He has published over 40 short stories in such magazines as Nature, PodCastle, and Galaxy's Edge. His noir urban fantasy novellas The Demons of Wall Street, The Demons of the Square Mile, and The Demons of Chiyoda are available from Mirror World Publishing. To learn more about the works and world of Laurence Raphael Brothers, you can follow him on Twitter at @lbrothers or visit his website, laurencebrothers.com.

Lorna Hopkins Keith, born in Hollywood, California, with a B.A. in Mathematics, has been writing since her teens. Fascinated by both numbers and words, she is also a musician, photographer, and puzzler. Lorna has self-published a science fiction trilogy, attended many science fiction conventions and writing workshops, and has read science fiction most of her life. She grew up in California, lived in Colorado, and moved to Florida with her physical therapist husband, where they live by a lake with a chatty calico cat.

As one of seven children, it's little wonder that Melissa Buhl's first story concerns itself with witches and witchcraft. Melissa is a voracious reader. When her nose isn't in a book, she works as a sales assistant in the health insurance industry. Melissa quilts, and has been known to play clarinet from time to time. With her husband, Brian, she has raised two beautiful and intelligent children, Bryanna and Christopher.

Mia Ram is a fantasy and science fiction writer from North Carolina. Her work has appeared in Metaphorosis Magazine and The NoSleep Podcast.

Michael A. Clark has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Liquid Imagination, Mystery Weekly Magazine, Gypsum Sound Tales anthologies Colp and Thuggish Itch, Cosmic Horror Magazine, the benefit anthology Burning Love and Bleeding Hearts and Moonlight & Misadventure. His short story, “What You Want”, appears in Dark Matter Magazine, Issue 016. Mike lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and works in industrial automation while spending as much time as he can outdoors. He writes short stories and music because that’s what he does.

Michael Allen Rose is a writer, musician, and performer based in Chicagoland. He won the 2021 Best Bizarro Novel Wonderland Award for his book Jurassichrist and has published with a variety of small presses, writing mostly bizarro, horror, and comedy. He also makes music under the name Flood Damage, and hosts the Ultimate Bizarro Showdown at BizarroCon among other events. He likes tea and cats.

Michael Thal is a freelance writer and author in Los Angeles, California. Michael began his career in public education. Due to a severe hearing loss, he left his tenured sixth grade teaching assignment to learn the writing craft. Michael has written over 80 articles for magazines like Highlights for Children, Fun for Kidz, Writer’s Digest, and San Diego Family Magazine. His novels include Goodbye Tchaikovsky, The Legend of Koolura, Koolura and the Mystery at Camp Saddleback, Koolura and the Mayans, The Abduction of Joshua Bloom, and The Lip Reader. You can learn more Michael and his works at michaelthal.com.

Mikko Rauhala is a bilingual Finnish science fiction author. Informed by both his master’s degree in intelligent systems and a transhumanist background, he’s most at home in hard science fiction settings, where he enjoys taking an eccentric premise and bringing it to its logical conclusion. As befits a Finn, his plot-driven narrative is often seasoned with a touch of dark, dry humor. Rauhala’s credits include co‑authoring Infinite Metropolis (Aurelia Leo, 2020) and "Rekindled" in Best Vegan SFF of 2020 (Metaphorosis, 2021).

Morgan Chalut (she/they) has been writing since she learned that anyone was allowed to do that; it wasn't illegal or anything! While it didn’t slow down her talking, it at least gave her parents and six older siblings (and her poor, poor teachers) a break once in a while. She hopes to continue to discover characters and worlds she can plot and explore and share. Morgan lives in Dallas, Texas with her delightfully handsome and silly, charming, supportive, and lovely husband, Philip. They have two dogs together: Caramel, who absolutely wants to be your friend, and Sammie, who very definitely does not.

Nigel Williams was born in the middle of England and is a voracious reader, geek, and true crime buff. He began writing in later life to stave off the terror of encroaching middle age. He lives in Sheffield with his wife and two young children. When not reading or writing, he usually spends his life fixing the house or wondering where his spare time went.

Paul S. Moore was born in the Missouri Ozarks, raised in St. Louis, and eventually settled in the sand of central Florida. He calls each of these places home. His inner mix of hillbilly river rat, lowlands daydreamer, sand road hermit, and reader of nineteenth-century history writers form the base of a non-elite education. These roots allow imagination to turn historic events into serendipitous thoughts. Those thoughts organize into stories, and stories become novels. With the remedial help of a good critique group, and the birth of publishing companies that read a manuscript without asking first, "What are your credentials?", he's found a voice to share those stories.

Philip Brewer’s stories often involve genetic engineering and money — perhaps not surprising, as everyone else in his family is some sort of naturalist and he has a degree in economics. Even before his former employer did him the great kindness of closing the site where he’d been working, giving him the opportunity to become a full-time writer, his stories often involved hard economic times. Philip’s work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Futurismic, Redstone Science Fiction, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He speaks Esperanto and uses it for international communication.

Robert Bagnall is a past finalist in the Writers of the Future competition and have appeared three times in the annual Best of British Science Fiction anthologies.  His science fiction novel, 2084 – The Meschera Bandwidth, and collection of 24 short stories previously published in Terraform, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere.

Ryan Southwick decided to dabble at writing late in life, and quickly became obsessed with the craft. He grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to a farming town on California’s central coast during elementary school, but it was in junior high school where he had his first taste of storytelling with a small role playing group and couldn’t get enough. In addition to half a lifetime in the software development industry, making everything from 3-D games to mission-critical business applications to help cure cancer, he was also a Radiation Therapist for many years. His technical experience, medical skills, and lifelong fascination for science fiction became the ingredients for his book series, "The Z-Tech Chronicles", which combines elements of each into a fantastic contemporary tale of super-science, fantasy, and adventure, based in his Bay Area stomping grounds. Ryan’s related short story “Once Upon a Nightwalker” was published in the Corporate Catharsis anthology, available from Paper Angel Press. You can find out more about Ryan Southwick at his website, Ryan Southwick, Author and his Facebook page.

Stephan James lives in Missouri with several children, several pets, and several works in progress. He fiction has been published in The Arcanist and Fall Into Fantasy 2022, while his non-fiction (as Stephan Mathys) has been published at Story Unlikely and Wabash Magazine. Find more of his work at stephanjameswrites.com.

Steve Soult graduated with a BS EE degree from the University of Santa Clara. He then went to the Navy’s OCS in Newport, Rhode Island and was commissioned as a US Naval Officer. During the Vietnam War, he was stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Base. After his release from active duty, he attended the University of California at Berkeley on the GI Bill, earned an MS EECS degree, and was hired by IBM in San Jose. While at IBM, Steve received an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award and had an article published in the IBM Journal of Research and Development. IBM also paid the tuition for his MBA degree in Management from the University of Santa Clara. IBM began to downsize its operations in Silicon Valley after Steve had worked there for over 17 years. After surviving several rounds of layoffs, he decided to leave IBM and join Abbott Laboratories. Steve retired from Abbott Laboratories to pursue his lifelong interests in art, photography, and writing full time. He has three grown children who are all employed as engineers in Silicon Valley. He lives in Morgan Hill with his wife, Susanne, and his dog, Snowy.

Steven D. Brewer has been a fan of science fiction and fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He still remembers getting scolded for not reading chapter books in fourth grade because he was avidly consuming The Hobbit late at night, by flashlight under his covers. And he probably got his copy from his older brother and most important mentor. As an author, Steven identifies diverse obsessions that underlie his writing. His early interest in natural history, life science, and environmentalism he learned from his father, an ecologist and ornithologist. He attributes seeing his mother study German for his abiding passion for languages that led him to major in Spanish (as well as Biology) and subsequently learn Esperanto and use it for international correspondence and travel. His fascination with Japanese culture grew from writing haiku and haibun in Esperanto. And his mania for information technology and the Internet led him back to graduate school where he earned a Masters in Earth Science and a PhD in Science Education. His scattered interests led to an eclectic employment history. He did farm work and food service growing up in southwest Michigan. He has worked as a large-animal caretaker, an archeological faunal analyst, a hunter of the fastest lizards in the world, a gas-station attendant, a bilingual teacher's aide for a migrant-worker education program, and an edutainer with live animals and a portable planetarium. For the past quarter century, he has served as a non-tenure-system faculty member in higher education. Steven currently teaches scientific writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his extended family.

Steven Radecki has been writing stories for as long as he can remember. After earning a degree in Information and Computer Science, he authored several technical papers about computer technology and one non-fiction book about developing multimedia applications, Multimedia with QuickTime. Now, he focuses on writing novels and screenplays. He is a technical writer and a certified project manager, managing projects for several high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. He is also the Executive Producer of the Small Publishing in a Big Universe podcast. Steven can be found at A Work in Progress. Mastodon

Sue Eaton was a teacher of children with autism and special needs for many years, and has written drama for children with communication and social needs, earning a Millennium award. She has published a science fiction/historical novel, The Woman Who Was Not His Wife, and has had short stories published in four horror anthologies, one science fiction anthology, and has edited an anthology of ghost stories.

Susan McDonough-Wachtman has been writing since grade school. She has tried her hand at children’s stories, short stories, romances, historical novels, essays, fantasies, mysteries, science fiction, numerous letters to the editor, and a blog. Susan has been a burger tosser, customer service rep, ad taker, curriculum developer, parent, teacher, reader, and gardener. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with one cat and one husband. Most recently, “Mother, May I” was accepted for the Halloween edition of Tales From the Moonlit Path, “Xanthippe” was included in a Brigids Gate anthology, “Pantsed” was published in Willow magazine, and “I Will Go Gently” appeared in Metaphorosis.

TN Tarrant is a hard-working single mom living in the wilds of Wyoming, who enjoys embarrassing her child with bright red lipstick prints to the forehead. When she isn't embarrassing her child, or hunting, killing and dragging groceries home through the snow, she loves to write romantic stories with hot lovers. She suffers from a love of extremely bad jokes and has a tendency to inflict them on innocent bystanders.

Travis has been a professional actor, Spider-Man at children’s birthday parties, an inventory specialist of fine and rare wine, and a teacher, but his favorite job by far is being a stay-at-home dad to twin girls, two cats, and a dog. His stories have appeared in Zombies Need Brains’ NOIR anthology, Metaphorosis Magazine, Metastellar, and elsewhere. Travis grew up in Indiana, and after spending a good deal of his twenties in Los Angeles, now resides in Washington, DC.

Vanessa MacLaren-Wray writes science fiction and fantasy exploring the challenges of communication and attachment in a diverse, complex universe. She’s the author of the Patchwork Universe series, including All That Was Asked, “The True Son,” and the duology Shadows of Insurrection and Flames of Attrition. She’s also a member of the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy consortium, with “Coke Machine” and The Smugglers. Her short fiction has appeared with Dragon Gems and in the award-winning anthology Fault Zone: Reverse. She hosts regular online open mics for the California Writers Club and acts as a guest host for the podcast Small Publishing in a Big Universe. She is also an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). As an energy systems engineer, she has analyzed electric power systems, studied climate-safe technology, and written extensively on energy issues. The oddball robots she builds out of kids’ toys and stray parts do not seek to destroy humans—instead, they brew tea and play music. Vanessa lives in farm country, where fields of strawberries and artichokes hold the developers at bay. When not arguing with her cats, she works on new stories, her email journal Messages from the Oort Cloud, and her website, Cometary Tales. Find all her connections at https://linktr.ee/Vanessa_MacLarenWray.