ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Elizabeth Ticknor is a gender-fluid writer and artist who shares a comfortable hobbit hole in Southeast Michigan with her Wookiee husband and their twin baby dragons. An avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, Elizabeth also enjoys well-written horror. The authors who have inspired her include Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, C. S. Lewis, Chuck Wendig, and David Wong. Her other interests include drawing, painting, and tabletop role-playing.
Elizabeth is a winner of the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award; her short fiction also appears in Fireside Magazine and an assortment of anthologies by Flame Tree Press, Air and Nothingness Press, and WordFire Press.
Elizabeth introduces her story with this: “The first story seeds for ‘The Phantom Carnival’ took root almost two decades ago, when I read Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression, by Errol Lincoln Uys. The thought of train-hopping teenage hobos stuck with me for years. I originally wanted to write a historical romance in the vein of the 1992 film Far and Away, but I couldn’t seem to get it down on paper; every time I tried, I felt like the story was missing something. In the end, I replaced the romance with a platonic friendship and added a speculative element, which caught my interest far more thoroughly. Once I determined what Alice and Dog-Faced Dan were running from, the rest of the story fell into place in short order.”
Visit Elizabeth at www.ticknortales.com or Twitter: @lizticknor
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Xiaomeng Zhang was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, in 1990. He has always had a keen interest in art, but science fiction movies captured his imagination, and he began to imitate scenes and characters he saw in those films.
He attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco to conduct his own comprehensive art research. It was a valuable opportunity to meet creatively talented artists with similar interests. After graduating from university, he worked in animation, video game development, and as a graphic designer.
His love for digital painting is reflected in his creativity. He uses his spare time to paint and study different styles of artistic creation. In the subsequent work, his ideas often brought unexpected effects for his company.
His work has been presented in several art magazines.
Xiaomeng continues to innovate his artistic creations and provide his freelance clients with high-quality illustration services.
To see more of his work, go to www.artstation.com/colinzhg.