When Ari Marmell has free time left over between feeding cats and posting on social media, he writes a little bit. His work includes novels, short stories, role-playing games, and video games, all of which he enjoyed in lieu of school work when growing up. He’s the author of the Mick Oberon gangland/urban fantasy series, the Widdershins YA fantasy series, and many others, with publishers such as Del Rey, Titan Books, Pyr Books, Wizards of the Coast, and now Omnium Gatherum. Ari currently resides in Austin, Texas. He lives in a clutter that has a moderate amount of apartment in it, along with George—his wife—and the aforementioned cats, who probably want something.

David Page was born in Boston and spent most of his early years in the New England area. Surrounded old stone walls, revolutionary forts and old Indian Trails, there were stories everywhere he looked. The past fascinated him. At age twelve, after reading Terry Brooks, “The Sword of Shannara” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s the Hobbit, he discovered the budding genre of Fantasy. That same year, he announced to his parents that he was going to be a writer. A good number of years, and a history degree later, David set off to the west coast in search of life experiences to channel into his writing. His journey was not in vain. In 2003, David’s first novel, “Surviving Frank” was published by Five Star Press. His second novel, "Mithras Court" was published in 2008. David continues to reside in the Pacific Northwest where he has found inspiration in the ocean, the mountains and the friends and family he has found there.

Delilah S. Dawson is the New York Times-bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma, Black Spire: Galaxy's Edge, and The Perfect Weapon. With Kevin Hearne, she writes the Tales of Pell. As Lila Bowen, she writes the Shadow series, beginning with Wake of Vultures. Her other books include the Blud series, the Hit series, and Servants of the Storm. She's written comics in the worlds of Marvel Action: Spider-Man, Lore's Wellington, Star Wars Adventures, Star Wars Forces of Destiny, The X-Files Case Files, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and her creator-owned comics include Star Pig, Ladycastle, and Sparrowhawk. Find out more at www.whimsydark.com.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. Mark Anthony learned to love both books and mountains during childhood summers spent in a Colorado ghost town. Later he was trained as a paleoanthropologist but along the way grew interested in a different sort of human evolution—the symbolic progress reflected in myth and the literature of the fantastic. He undertook Beyond the Pale to explore the idea that reason and wonder need not exist in conflict. Mark Anthony lives and writes in Colorado, where he is currently at work on his next writing project. Also writes under Galen Beckett.

aka Richard Awlinson, J D Lowder James Lowder has worked extensively in fantasy and horror fiction on both sides of the editorial blotter. He's authored several best-selling dark fantasy novels, including Prince of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose, and has had short fiction appear in such anthologies as Shadows Over Baker Street and Genius Loci. He's penned comic book scripts for several companies and the city of Boston. His book and film reviews, feature articles, and role-playing game design work can be found in such diverse publications as Amazing Stories, Milwaukee Magazine, and The New England Journal of History. As an editor, he's directed lines or series for TSR, Chaosium, Green Knight Publishing, and CDS Books. He's helmed more than twenty anthologies, several of them not about zombies. In the media, he is a regular contributor to the Milwaukee Public Radio show "Lake Effect," provided werewolf lore on the TV show Weird or What?, and served as a puppeteer on the indie film Misfit Heights.

Award-winning author Christie Golden has written over thirty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She has over a million books in print. 2009 will see no fewer than three novels published. First out in late April will be a World of Warcraft novel, Athas: Rise of the Lich King. This is the first Warcraft novel to appear in hardcover. Fans of the young paladin who fell so far from grace will get to read his definitive story. In June, Golden’s first Star Wars novel, also a hardcover, sees print. Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi—Omen is the second in a nine-book series she is co-authoring with Aaron Allston and Troy Denning. Also in June comes the conclusion of Golden’s StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga with the release of Twlight, the third book in the series. The first two are Firstborn and Shadow Hunters. 2004 saw the launch of an original fantasy series called The Final Dance, from LUNA Books. The first novel in the series, On Fire's Wings, was published in July of that year. The second, In Stone’s Clasp, came out in September of 2005. With In Stone’s Clasp, Golden won the Colorado Author’s League Top Hand Award for Best Genre Novel for the second time. The third book, Under Sea’s Shadow, is available only as an e-book Golden is also the author of two original fantasy novels from Ace Books, King's Man and Thief and Instrument of Fate, which made the 1996 Nebula Preliminary Ballot. Under the pen name of Jadrien Bell, she wrote a historical fantasy thriller entitled A.D. 999, which won the Colorado Author's League Top Hand Award for Best Genre Novel of 1999. Golden launched the TSR Ravenloft line in 1991 with her first novel, the highly successful Vampire of the Mists, which introduced elven vampire Jander Sunstar. Golden followed up Vampire with Dance of the Dead and The Enemy Within . In September of 2006, fifteen years to the month, The Ravenloft Covenant: Vampire of the Mists enabled Jander Sunstar to reach a whole new audience. Other projects include a slew of Star Trek novels, among them The Murdered Sun, Marooned, and Seven of Nine, and "The Dark Matters Trilogy," Cloak and Dagger, Ghost Dance and Shadow of Heaven . The Voyager novel relaunch, which includes Homecoming and The Farther Shore, were bestsellers and were the fastest-selling Trek novels of 2003. Golden continued writing VOYAGER novels even though the show went off the air, and enjoyed exploring the creative freedom that gave her in the two-parter called Spirit Walk, which includes Old Wounds and Enemy of my Enemy . Golden has also written the novelization of Steven Spielberg's Invasion America and an original "prequel," On The Run, both of which received high praise from producer Harve Bennett. On The Run, a combination medical thriller and science fiction adventure, even prompted Bennett to invite Golden to assist in crafting the second season of the show, if it was renewed. Golden lives in Loveland, Colorado, with her artist husband and their two cats.

"Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia: Although I haven't actually lived "down east" since just before my fourth birthday, I still consider myself a Maritimer. I think it's something to do with being born in sight of the ocean. Or possibly with the fact that almost no one admits to being from Ontario… Raised, for the most part, in Kingston, Ontario. It was the late sixties, early to mid seventies. Enough said for those of us who lived through it-and those who didn't seem to be getting another chance to fall off platform shoes. Spent three years in the Canadian Naval Reserve: I was a cook. They'd just opened it up to women and I figured it would be the first trade that would send women to sea. I was right. Unfortunately it happened a year after I left. No tattoos. Received a degree in RADIO AND TELEVISION ARTS (B.A.A.) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute: The year I graduated was the year that the CBC laid off 750 employees in Toronto alone. We were competing for jobs with people who had up to five years experience. The cat threw up on my degree. Spent eight years working at Bakka, North America's oldest surviving science fiction book store: Change Of Hobbit in California was actually a very little bit older but unfortunately it was a casualty of the recession in '91. During those eight years, while working full-time, I wrote seven books (the first seven, except for the original draft of CHILD), and nine short stories. In 1992, after living in downtown Toronto, a city of nearly three million, for thirteen years, I moved with two large cats, one small psychotic cat, and my partner out to a rented house in the middle of nowhere. In the years since, we've purchased the house, buried two of the original cats, replaced them with three more felines and, unintentionally, acquired a Chihuahua. You're probably wondering how two reasonably intelligent adults can unintentionally acquire a Chihuahua. Please don't ask. I love living in the country, writing full-time, anything by Charles de Lint, Xena, Hercules, and email. I dislike telephones, electric blankets, and bathroom renovations. I always expect catastrophe; as a result, I'm usually pleasantly surprised." Huff lives with her wife, Fiona Patton.

Elaine Bergstrom is a Milwaukee-based novelist whose writing melds vampire, romance, mystery and, always, suspense. Her first published piece of fiction was her first novel, Shattered Glass (1989). It introduced the character of the immortal Stephen Austra and artist Helen Wells, a victim of polio, along with Stephen's family of vampires who are “born not created and have an abhorrance for coffins, particulary their own.” The novel was a critical success, a consistent favorite with readers of adult-oriented vampire fiction. Bergstrom has written six novels in the Austra series, including Daughter of the Night, which featured Elizabeth Bathory as a half-breed Austra vampire. Beyond Sundown, the newest book in the Austra series, released early in 2011. The Violin, a novella, in 2012. Most are in print. All are available on Amazon kindle or through the author's website www.elainebergstrom.com Using her grandmother's name, Marie Kiraly, Bergstrom wrote a sequel to Dracula called Mina ... The Dracula Story Continues, and its sequel, Blood to Blood ... The Dracula Story Continues, which both look at Mina Harker as a woman changed by her experience in Transylvania, struggling to find her way in the repressive Victorian society. Both were featured in the Science Fiction Book Club and Doubleday Book Club. For the novel Madeline ... After the Fall of Usher, she adopted Poe’s journalistic style to tell a story in which the details of the last few months of Poe’s life are correct, with her own fictional story overlaid on them. J. Gordon Melton (The Vampire Encyclopedia) notes that Shattered Glass contains "one of the most horrific scenes in vampire literature." (less)