Born in the Year of the Dragon, Vonnie Winslow Crist is author of award-winning short stories, poems, and books. An active member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, and National League of American Pen Women - she taught creative writing for the Maryland State Arts Council for 10 years.

"Shivers, Scares, and Goosebumps" won a 2023 Imadjinn Award. "Beneath Raven's Wing" won a 2022 International Edgar Allan Poe Festival Saturday Visiter Award and was an Imadjinn Award Finalist. "The Enchanted Dagger" won a Maryland Writers Association Book Award and was a Compton Crook Award Finalist. Both "Owl Light" and "The Greener Forest" won eFestival of Words Short Story Collection Awards (2017 & 2018).

Her speculative writing appears in hundreds of books and magazines including "Asimov's Magazine," "Amazing Stories," "Chilling Ghost Short Stories," "Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noir," "Faerie Magazine," "Weirdbook: Witches," "Black Infinity," "Cirsova," and "Cast of Wonders."

As an illustrator, she's had over 1,000 illustrations published in books, magazines, and calendars.

She is an avid JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis fan, and a firm believer in the magical world that surrounds us! A clover-hand who has found so many 4-leafed clovers she keeps them in jars, Vonnie is quite fond of Harry Potter & Hogwarts, The Hunger Games, A Song of Ice & Fire, Star Wars, Star Trek, and everything Faerie!

Past Bram Stoker Award(R) nominee James Dorr combines the charm of a gentleman born in the US South with the wiles of a near-New York City upbringing, the canniness of a one-time New England resident, and the guile of an outwardly stolid Midwesterner, or so he says. It is known that he was born in Florida, grew up in New Jersey, went to college in Massachusetts, and currently lives in Indiana where he harbors a Goth cat named Triana. He is a short story writer and poet working mainly in dark fantasy and horror with forays into science fiction and mystery, an active member of HWA and SFWA, and has previously worked as a technical writer for an academic computing center, associate editor on a city magazine, a nonfiction freelance writer, and a semi-professional Renaissance musician.

See http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com for more information on James's doings, past, present, and possible future. Feel free to drop a note as the spirit moves -- he's always happy to hear readers' comments, and often will answer, so let your friends know too.

John Haas was born and raised in Montreal before moving to Calgary where he lived for twelve wonderful years. Now he lives in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, but still misses seeing those Rockies in the distance.

John has been writing for most of his life and writes in the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science-Fiction, with the occasional Mystery thrown in. He has had several short stories published in various excellent publications, as well as several novels.

His goal is to become a full time writer (rich and famous would be nice too but not necessary).

He lives with his two wonderful sons who give him lots of motivation.

For more information, please follow this link: https://linktr.ee/johnhaas

Tom Jolly's short SF and fantasy stories have appeared in Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Something Wicked, Compelling SF, Amazing Stories, and elsewhere. He also designs board and card games, such as Wiz-War, Drakon, Cavetroll, Got It!, Cryo, and Manhattan Project: Energy Empire (co-designed with Luke Laurie). When he isn't doing either of those, he's making obnoxious puzzle designs, which he encourages those with woodcrafting skills to produce (over 40 to date).

His next book will be "Unnatural Remedies," to be released October 2023, a sequel to his book, "An Unusual Practice."

He retired as an astronautical and electrical engineer in 2015 after working at Lockheed-Martin for 27 years on launch support for the Titan program, and satellite transportation for the Payload Transportation Systems group. His first launch in February of 1986 (a Titan 34D) blew up.

He lives in Port Orchard, WA, with his wife of 40+ years.

You can find more of his short fiction at https://sites.google.com/view/tomjolly/stories-and-articles

Frank Sawielijew writes fantasy and sci-fi with a focus on fast-paced action and adventure. His short stories have appeared in various small press anthologies and magazines, including Cirsova, Swords & Sorceries, and Sidearm & Sorcery. He is constantly working on new stories set in the World of Arath, where powerful sorceries and ancient high technology co-exist and adventure abounds.

David Morvryn (Sylvanus, Keith) Donachie is a writer, artist, game designer, and IT professional living in Edinburgh, Scotland. He lurks in a draughty garret (it is really a normal upstairs flat, but it is genuinely draughty), with his wife, and a large variety of scaly, furry, and chitinous pets.

David has written stories of every kind since he was old enough to hold a pencil. When he was little he used to make his own short story books out of loose paper and sellotape — it was always his dream to be a published author. Although he has written for a number of games (Solipsist, Starblazer, Mindjammer), The Night Alphabet is his first published work of fiction.

John M. Campbell speculates on the worlds currently unknown to us that science and engineering may unlock. He is compelled by the promise technology offers to address many of the issues facing human survival. The prospect of extraterrestrial life in our solar system on Mars and the outer planets fascinates him. He finds intriguing the likelihood that machine intelligence will likely surpass mankind’s ability to control it in this century. Inspiration for his stories often comes from the strange realities of quantum physics and cosmology.

John grew up reading science fiction and loved imagining a future extrapolated from what is now known. He hopes his stories will inspire careers in science and engineering as the authors he read inspired his career.

John lives with his wife in Denver, Colorado. Access his website at www.JohnMCampbell.com.

Told by a high school teacher that he had writing talent, Steve Carr’s career as a writer began right after graduation. He spent three years in the Army as a military journalist, writing articles for newspapers all over Florida, and followed that up with four years in the Navy where he taught in the Psychiatric Technician Program at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, training Hospital Corpsmen how to provide care and support in an inpatient setting for young men with psychiatric disorders. He then finished college, majoring in English/Theater and then spent the next 13 years working in non-profit health care development and management, mostly in rural communities, during which time several of his plays that he wrote in his spare time were produced in several states. He gave up the steady income to pursue his dream of writing/producing/directing his own plays and began a theatrical production company in Arizona. He retired early and in June 2016 began writing short stories. Since then he has had over 550 short stories published internationally in over 280 different print and online magazines, literary journals and anthologies. Collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, The Tales of Talker Knocks, and the hardback edition The Very Best of Steve Carr: 52 stories, was published by Clarendon House Publications. His collection of short stories, Heat, was published by Czykmate Productions. His self-published debut novel, Redbird, was released in November, 2019. He independently published LGBTQ: 33 Stories, which was released in January, 2020. In May of 2020 his short story collection The Theory of Existence: 50 short stories, was released. His guidebook Getting Your Short Stories Published was also published by Clarendon House. He has over 130 publications and books that contain his short stories listed on his Amazon bibliography. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. In 2019, he was on the cover of the Inner Circle Writers’ Magazine inaugural issue and dubbed “The King of Short Stories.” He’s a native of Cincinnati but has traveled extensively in the United States and abroad. He currently lives in Richmond, Virginia where when he’s not writing he frets about his writing peers not getting the attention they deserve. He is the founder of Sweetycat Press, a Facebook Group, that produces publications as promotion tools for emerging writers

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Shawn M. Klimek is an internationally published poet and short story author specializing in science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and humor, frequently blended. Over 250 of his works have been published in anthologies and e-zines. Hungry Thing is his first, self-published book. Follow him on Facebook @shawnmklimekauthor, XTwitter @shawnmklimek, or via his blog: jotinthedark

Angelique Fawns is a journalist and writer of speculative fiction. When not spinning dark tale, she interviews and promotes the publishers and writers of the genre. She lives in Canada and you can find more of her work at www.fawns.ca

Carlton Herzog publishes supernatural horror, science fiction and crime stories, as well as non-ficiton. His fiction portrays characters who are outsiders to ordinary life. Filled with strange terrors and brutal absurdities, his writing bends reality until it cracks. He is a USAF veteran with B.A. magna cum laude and J.D. from Rutgers. He served as Articles Editor of the Rutgers Law Review.

He had this to say about writing: “Writing is to the mind what exercise is to the body. I love the process from start to finish. Editorial acceptance, monetary remuneration, and public approval are nothing when compared with the irreplaceable feeling of personal accomplishment. Writing is a stroll through the insubstantial country of my mind. A land where I can see reflections of myself that are more me than anything I can find in a mirror or the eyes of others. it is an introcosm where I am truly free to see what I have done and yet may do, home to all my disappointments and discoveries, rememberings and reveries."

Abiran Raveenthiran is a first-generation born Canadian as many are in the cultural melting pot that is Toronto, Ontario. He has one foot in the culture of his past and one foot in the present culture with views into both. His works are written in a way to merge concepts of the eastern and western culture together; a product mirroring his own identity. Abiran has been previously published works of non-fiction essays published as part of The Lemon Theory and TamilCulture. In early to mid-2020, Abiran also has upcoming short stories to be published in anthologies: Mystical Girls Anthology and Unreal Anthology.

Austin Worley is a writer of heroic fantasy, superhero prose, weird westerns, and everything in between. His novelette "The Gale at Quiet Cove" earned an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future Contest in the 3rd Quarter of 2018.

When he's not slaving away over a keyboard, Austin fills his days with books, amateur astronomy, and family. You can follow him on Twitter @AMWorley_Writer, or on his DeviantArt profile, Legio-X.