Author: ravenchair (Page 1 of 14)

Ultimate Blanket Fort Application

April 2, 2025 / ravenchair

RavenCon is proud to be part of the Ultimate Blanket Fort Competition tour. The winner of the competition will get invited to the National Championships in 2026, hosted at ConVivial in Williamsburg, VA. Additional prizes are awarded for first, second, and third place.

Contestants have 45 minutes to construct the coolest blanket fort they can imagine. It is solely BYOB—Bring Your Own Blanket, but you can bring all the sheets, pillows, blankets, Lincoln logs, fairy lights, stuffed animals, or really anything you want to bring to help you construct the coolest fort. Points for originality, lighting, design, and theme. There is no age restriction! Adults and children are encourged to apply! Bribery of the judges is allowed (and encouraged), but you do have to follow the rules.

Want in on the fun? We know you do! A limited number of spots are available, but you can still enter right HERE.

Alix E. Harrow

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

Alix E. Harrow is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, Starling House, and various short fiction, including a duology of retold fairy tales (A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended). Her work has won a Hugo and a British Fantasy Award, and been shortlisted for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Southern Book Prize, and Goodreads Choice awards.

A former adjunct and Kentuckian, Harrow now lives in Virginia with her husband and their two semi-feral kids.

Count Gore De Vol

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

Count Gore De Vol began his career of hosting horror movies in 1973 on WDCA-TV in Washington, DC. In 1998, he took his program to the Internet, becoming the first horror host to do so. In 2018, he created his own Roku Channel, Count Gore De Vol Presents providing ten new video offerings every month.

Count Gore is played by actor Dick Dyszel, who also produces the program. He has appeared in several feature films including, The Alien Factor, Nightbeast, and Galaxy Invader, and was the subject of a feature length documentary on his career called Every Other Day is Halloween now available on an extended Blu-Ray.

April J. Asbury

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

April J. Asbury is a writer, teacher, and editor from southwest Virginia. She earned her M.F.A. from Spalding University and M.A. from Hollins. Her poetry and short stories appear in Artemis Journal, Still: The Journal, Gyroscope Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Songs of Eretz, Women Speak, Power of the Feminine I, Up Your Ars Poetica, Floyd County Moonshine, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and other publications. Her poetry collection, Woman with Crows, is available on apriljasbury.com.

Asylum 213

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

Asylum 213 was established in the summer of 2010 as a solo project for singer/guitarist, Dylan Lawson until it morphed into a full band in 2019. Once described as an “alt-rock wonderland” (The Auricular, 2018), Asylum 213 have taken the east coast and surrounding regions by storm, garnering notoriety for their chaotic, high-energy, jaw-dropping, and unpredictable live performances presented at every stage or living room they are booked. Asylum 213 blends elements of sludge, rok, shoegaze, alternative, mathrock, pop, trip-hop, metal, and noise in a titanic wave of aural euphoria; passionately packaged and delivered to all ears willing to listen. The songs draw from our many varied influences including science fiction and other pop culture favorites.

For fans of Kero Kro Bonito, Don Caballero, The Butthole Surfers, Anamanaguchi, Psyopus, The Smashing Pumpkins, Bukethead, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mr. Bungle, and Tub Ring.

Dr. J. “Cal” Baldari

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

Dr. Cal Baldari is a retired U.S. Army Sapper and military instructor turned professor of ethics. His research credits include alternative military ethics, Aristotelian excellence, moral conflict in literature, implicit bias mitigation, modern heroics, RPG morality, and many others. He has published both academically and creatively, with author credits in short military science fiction and fantasy, as well as philosophy. As an avid table-top role-player, Cal has run games for over a dozen systems professionally, and many more for fun. He also runs BEC Ltd., which provides expert services for authors, game designers, and comics writers; advising on ethics and consequences both within the stories they write and the effect it has on the reader. Finally, Cal is firmly entrenched in the battle to bring diversity and inclusivity to fandom. His work on implicit bias often references the broadening of “geek culture” and the awesome efforts many geeks have put forward to make this hobby one in which everyone, absolutely everyone, can enjoy it with impunity.

JM Beal

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

I started writing seriously in 2001, behind the check-out counter at Walgreens on leftover receipt paper or whatever I could get my hands on, with a novel full of drama and romance and epic sword battles. In all honesty it will probably never again see the light of day.

It’s been a long road since then, through different genres and projects and full of life events that keep getting in the way of what I’d like to be doing with my writing. Still, I’ve always got a new idea in the works.

In the grand tradition of writers who dream big, and jump without looking, a friend and I launched a publishing company in June of 2014. You can find us at Golden Fleece Press.

R.S. Belcher

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

R.S. (Rod) Belcher is a newspaper and magazine editor and journalist. He is the 2022 Webster Award Winner and was the Grand Prize winner of the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Anthology contest.

Rod has been a private investigator, DJ, a comic book store owner, and worked with the Occult Crime Taskforce for the Virginia General Assembly.

His novels include the Golgotha series (The Six-Gun Tarot, The Shotgun Arcana, The Queen of Swords, and The Ghost Dance Judgement), the Nightwise series (Nightwise, The Night Dahlia), and The Brotherhood of the Wheel series (The Brotherhood of the Wheel, King of the Road). Rod’s novel adaptation of the film, MiB International was published by Titan Books. His Audible Originals space opera audiobook, The Queen’s Road is available as a book from Falstaff Books.

He is currently finishing work on a stand-alone novel, Ink and Ash. His fifth Golgotha novel, The Hanged Man releases in fall of 2025 from Falstaff Books.

Rod has spoken and taught at numerous conferences and universities. He hosts programs on his Patreon Discord channel, as well as on a YouTube channel called The Knave of Pens with R.S. Belcher.

He lives in Virginia with his children, Jon, Emily and Stephanie, and his grandchildren, Torri, Sofiyah, Julian, and Jaxson.

James Blakey

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

James Blakey has published fifty short stories across a variety of genres and is a three-time finalist for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award, winning in 2019 for his story “The Bicycle Thief.” As an active member of the writing community, he leads critique groups in Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and Shenandoah County, and serves as the Secretary of the Rocktown Writers Guild. His debut novel Superstition, a paranormal thriller, was released by City Owl Press in 2024. James is also the publisher and co-editor of Charlottesville Fantastic: Arcane Echoes From Virginia’s Heartland, an anthology featuring speculative tales set in and around Charlottesville. When not crafting stories, James explores the outdoors having summited forty of the fifty US state high points, or embarks on bike-camping adventures along the East Coast. He resides in Broadway, VA. Discover more at JamesBlakeyWrites.com.

Jennifer Brinn

March 29, 2025 / ravenchair

Jennifer Brinn grew up with her nose in a book, reading everything with a dragon, a spaceship, or a horse on the cover. While she always told herself stories, it never occurred to her to write them down until she needed an elective in high school and chose creative writing.

She proudly writes in cursive with fountain pens, knows many useless facts, and loves putting stickers on things. Her retired racing greyhound and Cardigan Welsh Corgi let her pretend to be leader of the pack as long as she provides the right snacks.