Tag: Author (Page 1 of 7)

Gary Cohn

March 31, 2026 / ravenchair

For over thirty years Gary Cohn’s business card has read, “writer, teacher, fencer, motorcyclist.” He says that he has had two careers as a comics writer. The first was in the early eighties, when he co-created Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld and Blue Devil at DC Comics. His second comics career came a dozen years later, when he got aboard the Crusade Entertainment bandwagon early on, editing Shi and writing Shi: Senryaku as well as his own Demon Gun. Additionally, he has written a wide variety of other work, including several Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew paperbacks, short fiction, essays, history articles, ad copy, and more. In 2014, after retiring from teaching in NYC, he moved to Richmond, VA, where he has returned to writing. Current projects include Magic Bus, a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories; Playing With My Friends, an anthology of comics stories in the old House of Mystery model; New Devil, with Blue Devil artist/co-creator Paris Cullins and artist Derwin Roberson; and Nemesis, with former NYC teaching colleague and BronxHeroes Con founder Ray Felix. Gary is currently also doing writing/editorial/consultant work for Udderly Ridiculous Productions (udderlyridiculousproductions.com).

Aaron K. Crocker

March 31, 2026 / ravenchair

Aaron K. Crocker is an award-winning author and director based out of Fredericksburg, VA. In 2021, he started 669 Productions, a creative house devoted to psychological horror and experimental nightmares on screen. That same year, he sparked Campfire Publishing, which aims to gather writers from every shadowed corner of the world—novices and well-seasoned alike—to stitch together anthologies that carve horror into hauntingly personal niches. Whether on the page or the screen, Crocker’s work aims to walk the thin veil between real-world horror and the monster in the closet.

Tomas Cruz-Melendez

March 31, 2026 / ravenchair

Tomas Cruz-Melendez is a science fiction author and technology entrepreneur from Virginia. He published nine science fiction novels in 2025—stories he had been carrying since 1997—and used AI-generated cover art created through Midjourney. When he submitted all nine books to the U.S. Copyright Office under identical disclosure, two were rejected and seven were approved, with no standardized explanation for the difference. That experience sent him down a research path that revealed a far deeper problem: there is no infrastructure connecting content creators to the AI companies training on their work, no system for fair compensation, and no reliable way to verify what is authentic and what is fabricated.

Drawing on 35 years of telecommunications and systems architecture experience at AT&T, Verizon, Avaya, and CACI International, Tomas founded Rights Clearing House (RCH) to build that missing infrastructure. RCH is developing a universal platform for intellectual property verification, attribution, and licensing—giving authors and creators the tools to catalog their work, set their own licensing terms, and receive fair compensation when AI systems train on their content. The company holds four patents filed with the USPTO and has been called “the NASDAQ for intellectual property.”

Tomas is also writing Content Creators Be Damned: The Story of Building Infrastructure Big Tech Ignored, chronicling the journey from rejected copyright registrations to building the verification systems that new laws like the EU AI Act and proposed U.S. legislation are already demanding. He lives in Fauquier County, VA, with his family, and believes that creators deserve infrastructure as sophisticated as the AI systems consuming their work.

Lori D’Angelo

March 30, 2026 / ravenchair

Lori D’Angelo is the author of the 2024 feminist sci-fi horror short story collection, The Monsters Are Here, which was published in 2025 by ELJ Editions. She is also a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, and an alumna of the Community of Writers. She holds an MA from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an MFA from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including BULL, Drunken Boat, Gargoyle, Moon City Review, Reed Magazine, and Rejection Letters. She teaches composition at Eastern Mennonite University, writes about books for The Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg and is a fan of many sci-fi TV shows including Travelers, 12 Monkeys, and Person of Interest. Some of her favorite authors are Ray Bradbury, Jane Austen, and Shirley Jackson.

Drema Deòraich

March 30, 2026 / ravenchair

Drema Deòraich is an award-winning author of speculative fiction that sometimes asks big questions. Her flash fiction, short stories, and novelettes have been published in numerous online journals, as well as a few semi-professional zines. Her novels include Entheóphage (medical mystery/climate fiction) and The Founder’s Seed trilogy (science fiction/science fantasy). Drema’s collection of short works, Murder of Crows, and Other Consequential Tales, and her two novelettes—“Deer in Headlights” (dark fantasy) and “Jane Doe #7” (medical science fiction)— are all available on Kindle Unlimited. Nexus, the science fantasy trilogy follow-up to The Founder’s Seed, is currently in the works.

Drema currently lives in Southeast Virginia with her husband, his two cats, and all her other characters. When time and mosquitoes permit, Drema works on transforming their yard into more welcoming habitat for small wildlife. She also occasionally blogs about writing, ideas from Life that inspire her, environmental issues, ways to live more sustainably, and whatever else captures her fancy.

Meri Elena

March 30, 2026 / ravenchair

Meri Elena is a North Carolina speculative fiction author, cat mom, and friendly neighborhood witch. Meri is the author of the Brunswick Prophecies YA urban fantasy series. The third book is coming out this year. She has also published several short stories in anthologies. Her “real” job is communications for the NC Department of Public Safety, so ask her how to build an emergency kit for anything from a hurricane to a zombie apocalypse.

L. Ana Ellis

March 30, 2026 / ravenchair

L. Ana Ellis, a sleep-deprived government worker by day, lets her imagination roam free while writing science fiction late into the night. After spending her days toiling over spreadsheets in a windowless cubicle with fluorescent lighting, she spends her coffee-fueled late-night writing sessions creating worlds that are more of a commentary on the present than an accurate prediction of the future. Speculating about how societies will change in the future fascinates her; she is undeterred that so far she has been wrong 100% of the time.

Ellis has written four novels, including a cyberpunk sci-fi trilogy and a book about spy cats that’s targeted to preteens but fun for cat lovers of all ages. Her debut novel, Panacea Genesis, was a semifinalist in the 2023 Self Published Science Fiction Competition.

She lives in Alexandria, VA with her husband and two cats. When procrastinating, she occasionally posts on Instagram as lanaellisbooks. She publishes under the indie press Fire-Forged Books.

Jaq Evans

March 30, 2026 / ravenchair

Jaq Evans is a speculative fiction and horror author based out of Richmond, VA. She grew up running feral in the Blue Ridge foothills, then spent over a decade in a state that’s famously bleak and spooky—and frankly, it shows. Jaq earned an MFA in Popular Fiction from Stonecoast (University of Southern Maine). You can find their short fiction in Fusion Fragment, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and elsewhere, and her debut novel, What Grows in the Dark (MIRA/HarperCollins) at your favorite local bookstore.

Beth Ford

March 29, 2026 / ravenchair

Beth Ford is an author living in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She writes time travel romance and historical fiction. Her time travel novels include Love Between Times and its sequel, Love Across Time. Her work has also appeared in a variety of literary journals.

J.S. Furlong

March 29, 2026 / ravenchair

J.S. (Jen Selby) Furlong is a frequent writer’s conference/book festival guest and speaker as well as a professional actor. She’s the founder of both the growing, girl-powered indie house Masterful Person Company Publishing (Abante Press, Sprouts Books, Long River Press, WiseLife Books, Spyglass Press) and The Wandering Wordsmith Book Shop. She’s a graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, RADA at Oxford University, and The University of Mary Washington (BLS). She’s a member of SCBWI, Authors Against Book Bans, Actor’s Equity Association, and SAG-AFTRA and the host of the Author-to Author podcast.

Current titles include the YA suspense series The Unimaginables (Hidden City (BookFest Gold Medal, Indie Excellence Award Nominee), Tattooed Angel (Young Adult Virginia Award librarian nominee 2025) and Magick Squared); the middle-grade series Meredith’s World (Meredith at the Met and Meredith for Congress); the picture book Mrs. Cheesely Loves Cheese; the LARP guide Antagonists (Mind’s Eye Theatre/Vampire: The Masquerade); and live circus-theater writing (Hats, The Mysterious Staircase, and Circus of Night—co-authored with Neil Gaiman).

Jen lives in Virginia with six goats, five chickens, four teenagers, three cats, two dogs, and her husband. Fun fact: Jen once played a small, but pivotal role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.