Liz has followed her heart through a wide variety of careers, including farming with a team of draft horses, and working as a field paramedic, Outward Bound instructor, athletic trainer, and roller-skating waitress, among other curious choices. She also knows more about concrete than you might suspect. ​ Her novels written under the name L. D. Colter explore contemporary and dark fantasy, and ones written as L. Deni Colter venture into epic fantasy realms. She's a two-time winner of the Colorado Book Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy, a Writers of the Future winner, and her short stories have appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies. Her website and blog can be found at: http://lizcolter.com/ To receive updates and offers, please sign up for her newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/bc969529fd5b/4tnr6...

Megan E. O'Keefe was raised amongst journalists, and as soon as she was able joined them by crafting a newsletter which chronicled the daily adventures of the local cat population. She lives in the Bay Area of California, and spends her free time tinkering with anything she can get her hands on. Her fantasy debut, Steal the Sky, won the Gemmell Morningstar Award and her space opera debut, Velocity Weapon was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts. Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He recently began a long-term position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University. Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret. For further details, see the author's Wikipedia page. For an ordered list of the author's works, see Wikipedia's List of works by Orson Scott Card. http://us.macmillan.com/author/orsons...

Winner of the Jim Baen and L Ron Hubbard Writer’s of the Future awards, C. Stuart Hardwick is a regular in Analog magazine, known for hard sci-fi that soars through the cosmos, exploring the depths of human nature and the mysteries of space and time. His evocative prose, enriched by scientific rigor, ignites the imagination and leaves an indelible mark on the human mind. When he’s not at the keyboard or on his bicycle, Stuart can often be found building or dismantling things with equal glee, helping electrons find their way across the lonely Texas power grid, or developing new novel writing software when he should, just maybe, be writing new novels instead.

Leena Likitalo hails from Finland, the land of endless summer days and long, dark winter nights. She lives with her husband on an island at the outskirts of Helsinki, the capital. But regardless of her remote location, stories find their way to her and demand to be told. While growing up, Leena struggled to learn foreign languages. At sixteen, her father urged her to start reading in English, and thus she spent the next summer wading through his collection of fantasy and science fiction novels. Leena breaks computer games for a living. When she's not working, she writes obsessively. And when she's not writing, she can be found at the stables riding horses.