Richard Dansky

A professional video game writer and designer, Richard Dansky lives in North Carolina. Firefly Rain is his first original novel. You can learn more about Richard at his website.

J.M. McDermott

J.M. McDermott graduated from the University of Houston in 2002 with a BA in Creative Writing. He resides in Arlington, Texas with an assortment of empty coffee cups, overflowing bookshelves, and crazy schemes. Find out more about J.M. McDermott by visiting him at his blog.

Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem

Award-winning author, poet, and playwright Melanie Tem is the author of fourteen published novels. Her works have won, among many accolades, the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award. Dan Simmons called her “the literary successor to Shirley Jackson,” and readers and reviewers consistently rave about her deeply involved stories of the terrors that haunt families.

Steve Rasnic Tem has been called “a school of writing unto himself” (Joe R. Lansdale). His surreal stories have earned him comparisons to Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury, and Raymond Carver. As a solo writer and editor he has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and International Horror Guild awards, and been nominated for the Philip K. Dick and World Fantasy awards.

Together, Melanie and Steve won the Bram Stoker Award for their multimedia collection Imagination Box, and won a Stoker, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy award for their novella “The Man on the Ceiling” (the only work ever to win all three). They live in Denver, Colorado with the family they have made for themselves.

Visit Melanie and Steve at their website.

Rob Rogers

Rob Rogers was born in Illinois and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his degree in English from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and studied creative writing in Boston at Emerson College. He lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with his wife Dina and sons Alex and Zack. Devil’s Cape is his first novel. Discover more about Rob Rogers by reading his blog.

Tim Waggoner

Tim Waggoner wrote his first story at the age of five, when he created a comic book version of the film King Kong vs. Godzilla on a stenographer's pad. It took him a few more years until he began selling professionally, though.

Since then, Tim has written and published novels for both adult and young readers, including Temple of the Dragonslayer and Return of the Sorceress (both for Wizards of the Coast), Dark Ages: Gangrel and Exalted: A Shadow Over Heaven's Eye (both White Wolf), Necropolis (Five Star), and Defender: Hyperswarm (I-Books). He is also the author of the short story collection All Too Surreal (Prime Books). He has published over seventy short stories in the fantasy and horror genres, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer's Digest, Writers' Journal, New Writer's Magazine, Ohio Writer, Speculations, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

A number of his stories have received honorable mentions in various editions of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. He won first place in the 1998 Authorlink! New Author Awards Competition and was a finalist for the Darrell Award for Best MidSouth Short Story in 1999. In addition to writing fiction, Tim has worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and copy editor. He holds BS ed. and MA degrees from Wright State University and currently serves as an associate professor of English and coordinator of creative activities at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. His wonderful wife Cindy is a psychologist (a useful profession for the wife of a writer), and they have two lovely daughters, Devon and Leigh.

Tim hopes to continue writing and teaching until he keels over dead, after which he wants to be stuffed and mounted, and then placed in front of his computer terminal.

His home page is located at www.sff.net/people/Tim.Waggoner.

Walter H. Hunt

Walter H. Hunt is a speculative-fiction writer whose work has been compared to the novels of Orson Scott Card, Frank Herbert, and David Weber. His college background includes a degree in history, a subject that has always fascinated him; contained within the covers of his books are the fruits of research and discovery that made the journey to completion almost as enjoyable as the satisfaction with the final product. A baseball fan and Freemason, he makes writing his full-time profession. He lives in eastern Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.