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.
Ashe has been a cosplayer for almost twenty years and has always loved the bizarre and strange parts of fandom. From sci-fi to anime, their love for fandom space and pop culture knows no bounds! Especially, the cosplay and fabrication aspect.
And even more so for ballgowns and fancy builds.
Ever the eccentric, they’ve truly grown their repertoire to include drag performances as well!
JM Beal started writing seriously in 2001, behind the check-out counter at Walgreens on left over receipt paper, 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.
In the grand tradition of writers who dream big, and jump without looking, she and a friend launched a publishing company in June of 2014. You can find them at Golden Fleece Press.
Jim Beall (BS-Math, MBA, PE) has been a nuclear engineer for fifty years, beginning as a nuclear engineering officer in the US Navy. Civilian experience includes design, construction, inspection, enforcement, and assessment with a nuclear utility, an architect engineering firm, and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC). Assignments included on-site health physics support, piping design stress analyses, reactor licensing, reactor startup testing (Canadian Point Lepreau heavy water reactor), research reactor inspections, and an assist mission to the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine in Kiev. USNRC positions included reactor site construction senior resident inspector (SRI), reactor operations SRI, inspection team leader, safety analyst, senior enforcement specialist, and reactor policy assistant to three different Presidential-appointed USNRC Commissioners while earning the agency’s Meritorious and Distinguished Service awards.
Duties of those policy-level posts included research into alternative and speculative energy sources, as well as energy forecasts and transmission technologies. Energy sources included coal, oil, hydro, geothermal, tidal, solar, wind, fracking, space-based, heavy water reactors, breeder reactors, fusion, and even anti-matter.
Publications:
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS):
Elsevier:
Baen Books:
Ed Bishop is a full-time electrical, computer and systems engineer, software engineer, and data scientist. He is also a part-time researcher in theoretical and experimental particle physics participating in the CMS Experiment of the Large Hadron Collider project (applying his physics and data science expertise). His recent theoretical physics research includes joining a collaboration to study Einstein’s Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity (TPEGR), an alternative but mathematically equivalent formulation of General Relativity created by Albert Einstein in the late 1920s, and its applications to precision cosmology (in particular how it can help explain phenomena related to dark matter, dark energy, galaxy formation, cosmic inflation and the formation of the large-scale structure of the universe) and to explore the emerging “Unified Gauge Gravity Model,” which unifies TPEGR with the Standard Model of Particle Physics into a renormalizable quantum gravity theory which is a promising candidate for a “theory of everything.” He was also co-editor of hometheaterinfo.com (site now defunct) with his late brother Doug and has written or edited over 5,000 film, television and streaming media reviews which have been syndicated on sites including rottentomatoes.com and metacritic.com. Ed also has an active interest in history and folklore.
James Blakey is an acclaimed author with over fifty short stories across multiple genres, earning three finalist nominations for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award, including a 2019 win for “The Bicycle Thief.” His debut paranormal thriller, Superstition, was published by City Owl Press in 2024. James is publisher and co-editor of two speculative fiction anthologies: Charlottesville Fantastic: Arcane Echoes from Virginia’s Heartland and Shenandoah Fantastic: Mystic Whispers from the Valley’s Vales. An active member of the writing community, he leads critique groups in Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and Shenandoah County, and is Secretary of the Rocktown Writers Guild. His short story collections include The Cat Who Loved David Duchovny, Fast Times at Spiro Agnew High, and The Five People You Meet in Atlantic City. When not writing, James summits US state high points—forty and counting—or embarks on bike-camping adventures along the East Coast. He lives in Broadway, VA. Visit JamesBlakeyWrites.com for more.
Blue Cheese Robotics (FRC Team 1086) is a student-run high school robotics team from Henrico County, VA founded in 2003. They are part of the FIRST Robotics Competition program, designing and building 100+ pound industrial robots to compete in exciting, fast-paced games with teams from around the world.
Blue Cheese Robotics strives to “brie the best they can brie,” working to inspire the next generation of STEM students through outreach and advocacy initiatives. They accrue thousands of volunteer hours yearly in hosting community and school demonstrations and festivals. Their outreach focuses on making STEM accessible and fun for all ages.
At RavenCon, Blue Cheese will be teaching attendees how to play CIAS award-winning multiplayer cybersecurity card games. Using a familiar tabletop CTG play mechanism, the games are designed to introduce players to real world cybersecurity concepts and tools. Players will build networks, implement security controls and attack their opponent, leveraging hacking and exploiting weaknesses to breach their defenses for victory.
Blue Cheese will also be demoing one of their robots. Attendees can get close-up and hands-on, learning directly from the students about the mechanical and technical design that goes into building it.
Blue Cheese Robotics is excited to bring their robot and hands-on educational STEM fun to RavenCon this year.
Bill Bridges is a writer and game designer, most known for developing White Wolf’s World of Darkness horror RPG setting and the Fading Suns science-fiction universe (currently published by Ulisses Spiele). Bill lives near Atlanta, GA, where he currently serves on the boards of the C.G. Jung Society of Atlanta and Broadleaf Writers Association.
As one of the original crew behind the landmark World of Darkness property, Bill helmed the Werewolf: the Apocalypse line of books and games. He was Senior Content Designer on CCP Games’ World of Darkness MMO and was the lead designer of the award-winning Storytelling system rules for White Wolf’s Chronicles of Darkness. He created the Mage: the Awakening and Promethean: the Created settings, and developed numerous books in the Mage: the Ascension game series.
His fiction works include My Time Among the Stars for Fading Suns, and The Silver Crown, The Last Battle, and The Song of Unmaking novels for Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Bill contributed to world design for Segasoft’s Emperor of the Fading Suns computer game and co-wrote the scripts for Viacom’s interactive horror movie Dracula Unleashed and Interplay’s Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Visit Bill at bill-bridges.com.
Elizabeth Broadbent is the author of Blood Cypress (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2025), Ink Vine, and Ninety-Eight Sabers (both Undertaker Books, 2024). A former journalist with bylines in The Washington Post, Insider, ADDitude Magazine, and TODAY! Parents, she was an eight-year staff writer for Scary Mommy; her essay, “A Mother’s White Privilege,” is used by anti-racism programs in universities and activist organization worldwide. She has appeared as a guest on BBC World News, MSNBC, CNN, and NPR’s All Things Considered. An exiled South Carolinian, Broadbent lives in the Commonwealth of Virginia with her husband, three sons, two dogs, and many cats.
Rachel A. Brune is an Army veteran, former military journalist, novelist, and editor of the creepy and macabre. She is the founder of Crone Girls Press, an indie horror micropress specializing in anthologies. In 2022, Falstaff Books published the first book in her werewolf secret agent series, Cold Run; later that year, she took on the position of Senior Editor of Falstaff’s new horror imprint, Falstaff Dread. She lives with her spouse, two daughters, and one fluffy orange cat.
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