Jim Stratton is a chameleon. By day, he is a mild-mannered government lawyer specializing in the field of child abuse prosecutions, and lives with his wife and children in southern Delaware. But he’s been an avid fan of speculative fiction all his life, and began writing genre fiction 10+ years ago.

In recent years he’s been forging his dark alter ego of genre fiction author through publication of his tales in venues like Dragons, Knights & Angels Magazine, Ennea (published in Athens, Greece) & Nth Degree Magazine. The appearance of his first foray into the world of poetry in The Broadkill Review is but another step in his master plan. In 2008 & 2009, he stepped into the light when his stories appeared in Tower of Light Online Magazine, Big Pulp E-zine and the APaper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel Anthology of Oriental fantasy (Fantasist Enterprises). His appearance in Age of Blood & Snow is yet another step in his master plan. His final reveal, the novel Aloki’s Gambit, is under review for publication in 2010 with Morrigan Press.

Patrick A. Vanner was born into a Marine family, and, after attending Penn State University, majoring in aerospace and electrical engineering, he enlisted in the Marine Corps like his parents before him. After a successful military tour, he earned a degree in network administration and began a career in telecommunications and information technology. He divides his time between working, reading, writing, gaming and spending an exorbitant amount of money on anime, giving truth to the saying, “Anime, it’s more addictive than crack”. Patrick currently lives with the love of his life, Heather, and six insane cats that make their lives interesting in every sense of the ancient Chinese curse.

Allen Wold was born in south-western Michigan, where he began writing teeny little stories when he discovered an old portable typewriter. He finished high school in Tucson, Arizona, and graduated fron Pomona College, in Claremont, California, where he later met his wife, Diane. They married in 1972, and moved to North Carolina, where he began his career as a full time writer. In 1986, he became a full time father, writing when he could make the time. In 2003, he became a full time writer again, when his daughter, Darcy, went off to college, also at Pomona.

He has published nine novels (has written several more, most of which will never see print, thank God), several short stories (mostly for the Elf Quest anthologies), five non-fiction books on computers (he’s completely self-taught, and it probably shows), and a number of articles, columns, reviews, and so forth, also concerning computers (written in language even he can understand).

Currently, Allen has an epic heroic fantasy (2500 pages, 680,000 words) with an editor, and a bizarre haunted house story with an agent. Two more projects are in hand simultaneously.

Allen has been running his version of a writer’s workshop at various conventions for more than twenty five years, and has had some success, since several people have not only finished but sold stories started in the workshop.

Allen is a member of SFWA, and Toastmasters International (which gives him a captive audience).

Leona Wisoker’s work is fueled equally by coffee and conviction; her debut series, “Children of the Desert”, is set in a world which is still struggling through a number of basic moral and developmental issues. The final result leaves room not only for serious questions but moments of laughter, and inevitably involves coffee (and sometimes tea).

Her short stories have appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Alienskin.com, and Anotherealm.com, among other places. She is a reviewer and editor at the Sleeping Hedgehog; an editor for Damnation Books; and regularly blogs about writing and creativity. Her hobbies, like her writing, generally tie into good food and great coffee at some point.

Guest Website: www.leonawisoker.wordpress.com

 Steve White was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1946 and served as a Naval Intelligence officer in the Mediterranean and in the Vietnam War Zone. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and an associate member of the Virginia Bar. In addition to the best-selling “Starfire” military science fiction series with David Weber, he has written several popular science fiction adventure novels for Baen. They include the trilogy comprising The Disinherited, Legacy and Debt of Ages, which combine fast-paced space opera with Arthurian mythology. He has also written the galaxy-spanning adventure Prince of Sunset, and its sequel Emperor of Dawn, the secret-history science fiction novel The Prometheus Project, the high fantasy novel Demon’s Gate, and the time travel adventure Blood of the Heroes.  His most recent solo novels are Saint Antony’s Fire, an alternate-history fantasy set in Elizabethan times, and Wolf Among the Stars, a sequel to his earlier science fiction novel Eagle Against the Stars. Extremis, a new novel in the “Starfire” series, this time in collaboration with Chuck Gannon, was released in May 2011. Sunset of the Gods, the second novel in the “Temporal Regulatory Authority” series that began with Blood of the Heroes, is due out in the summer of 2012. Steve lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is married and has three daughters, the youngest of whom he and his wife found and adopted in Russia… but that’s another story.