Marc L Abbott received his MFA in Creative Writing from SNHU. He is a Brooklyn native whose work includes The Hooky Party & Etienne and the Stardust Express. He’s the co-author of Hell at Brooklyn Tea and Hell at the Way Station, the two-time African American Literary Award-winning horror anthology. His horror short stories are featured in New York State of Fright, Even in the Grave, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign & Blackened Roots An Anthology of the Undead. He is a Moth Story Slam and Grand Slam Storyteller winner and an award-winning actor. He is one of the hosts of the podcast Beef, Wine and Shenanigans and a member of the Horror Writers Association.
Find out more about him at www.whoismarclabbott.com.
Award-winning author, editor, and publisher Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. In 2014 she joined forces with Mike McPhail and Greg Schauer to form eSpec Books (www.especbooks.com).
Her published works include eight novels, Yesterday’s Dreams, Tomorrow’s Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court, The Redcaps’ Queen, Daire’s Devils, The Play of Light, and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo collections Eternal Wanderings, A Legacy of Stars, Consigned to the Sea, Flash in the Can, Transcendence, The Kindly Ones, Dawns a New Day, The Fox’s Fire, Between Darkness and Light, and the non-fiction writers’ guides The Literary Handyman, More Tips from the Handyman, and LH: Build-A-Book Workshop. She is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Gaslight & Grimm, Side of Good/Side of Evil, After Punk, and Footprints in the Stars. Her short stories are included in numerous other anthologies and collections. She is a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
In addition to her literary acclaim, she crafts and sells original costume horns under the moniker The Hornie Lady Custom Costume Horns, and homemade flavor-infused candied ginger under the brand of Ginger KICK! at literary conventions, on commission, and wholesale.
Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail and four extremely spoiled cats.
Rachel A. Brune is an Army veteran, former military journalist, novelist, and editor of the creepy and macabre. She is the founder and chief editor at Crone Girls Press, an indie horror micro-press specializing in anthologies. In 2022, she became Senior Editor of Falstaff Books’ new horror imprint, Falstaff Dread. She lives with her spouse, two daughters, one reticent cat, and two flatulent rescue dogs. The first book in her werewolf secret agent series, Cold Run, was published in 2022 by Falstaff Books.
James Chambers received the Bram Stoker Award® for the graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe and is a four-time Bram Stoker Award nominee. He is the author of the short story collections On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road, which received a starred review from Booklist, which called it “…satisfyingly unsettling”; and the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, described as “…chillingly evocative…” in a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. He has written the novellas, Three Chords of Chaos, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God, and many others, including the Corpse Fauna cycle: The Dead Bear Witness, Tears of Blood, The Dead in Their Masses, and The Eyes of the Dead. He also writes the Machinations Sundry series of steampunk stories. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and co-edited A New York State of Fright and Even in the Grave, an anthology of ghost stories. His website is: www.jameschambersonline.com.
Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times—on stage and screen, as he has traveled the world for forty-plus years as a stuntman, swordmaster, storyteller, bodyguard, actor, and haunted house barker.
He is proud to have studied sword under Errol Flynn’s last Stunt double and been beaten up by Hawk on Spenser for Hire TV show. He did over two hundred episodic appearances on Soap operas, 70 feature films and 60 renaissance festivals all over the country.
He has published dozens of novels and his poetry and stories have been printed in over two hundred magazines including Weird Tales, Mystery, Pulp Adventures, Space & Time, Mad, Cirsova, Silverblade, Heroic Fantasy, Blazing Adventures and Sherlock Holmes Mystery.
His novel A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure won best novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award. He is also the winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark Award for Best Author. And he was a finalist for the Derringer short mystery award in 2022. His short story “The Clockwork Nutcracker” won P& E’s best steampunk story and has been expanded into a novel. Epic ebook award finalist. P&E winner “Best Steampunk Short”, a P & E finalist for “Best Fantasy short, Collection” and his novel “Callback for a Corpse” was a second-place winner in the CWR Poll as best mystery.
His website is TheUrbanSwashbuckler.com.
Maxwell I. Gold is an acclaimed Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies such as Weird Tales Magazine, Startling Stories, Space and Time Magazine, Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, Chiral Mad 5, and many more. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations for both the Rhysling Award and the Pushcart Prize. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.
Bram Stoker Award® finalist Carol Gyzander writes and edits horror and science fiction, frequently with a female-centered perspective. She calls her work “twisted tales that touch your heart.” Her short stories appear in various magazines, including Weird Tales 367 and Weird House Magazine, and dozens of anthologies—the latest is Tangle & Fen.
Her novella from Systema Paradoxa, Forget Me Not, features a cryptid creature near Niagara Falls in 1969 with a family twist. She co-edited the ghost anthology Even in the Grave and A Woman Unbecoming, the horror anthology inspired by the reversal of Roe v. Wade that benefits reproductive healthcare services.
Living in the NYC suburbs of northern NJ, Carol is Co-Chair of the Horror Writers Association NY Chapter, co-host of their monthly Galactic Terrors online reading series, and helps oversee HWA chapters in the US. HWA, MWA, SFWA, SinC. Her website is www.CarolGyzander.com.
Jeffrey Lyman is an engineer in the New York City area. His work has appeared in the anthologies Sails and Sorcery from Fantasist Enterprises, New Blood from Padwolf Publishing, and Breach the Hull, So It Begins, By Other Means, Best Laid Plans, and Dragon’s Lure from Dark Quest Books. He was co-editor of No Longer Dreams and all four volumes of the award-winning Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, several of which won awards. He is a 2004 graduate of the Odyssey Writing School and won 2nd place in the fourth quarter of the 27th Annual Writers of the Future Award.
Will McDermott turned a love of science fiction and games into a writing career. He has published nine novels, more than twenty short stories, and helped create numerous worlds, characters, and stories for card, board, and video games. His fiction is often set in gaming universes, including Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, Renegade Legion Universe, and Mage Wars. He is known for bringing larger-than-life characters alive, including Warhammer’s Kal Jerico and Mad D’onne, Magic’s Balthor the Stout and, more recently, Night Stalker’s Carl Kolchak. Check out willmcdermott.com, w_mcdermott on Instagram or willmcdermott.author on Facebook.
F. R. Michaels is a nice, normal person who happens to like weird and scary stories. Seriously. His work has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Haunts (as Frank Michaels) as well as the anthologies Strangely Funny II, Mysterion, Wicked Weird, Wicked Creatures, Monstorm, and SVP’s Little Black Book of Terror. His jazz-age pulp horror novella “The Blood of Saint Vera” will be available sometime next year. He dwells on Long Island and writes horror and dark fantasy.
Much to his embarrassment, Bernie Mojzes has outlived Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Janice Joplin and the Red Baron, without even once having been shot down over Morlancourt Ridge. Having failed to achieve a glorious martyrdom, he has instead turned his hand to the penning of paltry prose (a rather wretched example of which you currently hold in your hands), in the pathetic hope that he shall here find the notoriety that has thus far proven elusive. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines, including Bad-Ass Faeries II and III, Gaslight & Grimm, Betwixt Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and What Lies Beneath. In his copious free time, he published and co-edited Unlikely Story (www.unlikely-story.com) and the ever-timely Clowns: The Unlikely Coulrophobia Remix, as well as editing The Flesh Made Word for Circlet Press. Should Pity or perhaps a Perverse Curiosity move you to seek him out, he can be found at http://www.kappamaki.com.
Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as ‘spoiling cats.’ When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction, most of it in a humorous bent. Since 1987 she has published over fifty books and more than 200 short stories. She has also written with notables in the industry, including Anne McCaffrey and Robert Asprin. Jody teaches writing seminars at SF conventions, including the two-day intensive workshop at Dragon Con, and is Coordinating Judge for the Writers of the Future Contest.
Hildy Silverman writes speculative fiction of all kinds, primarily for anthologies. Her story, “The Six-Million-Dollar Mermaid,” was a finalist for the WSFA Small Press award. Her novella, Invasive Species, was released in 2023 as part of the Systema Paradoxa/ Cryptid Crate series published by eSpec Books. From 2005-2018, Hildy was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Space and Time, a venerable magazine of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. She is a past president of the Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers and a frequent panelist on the science fiction convention circuit. For more information about Hildy, please visit www.crazy8press.com and www.hildysilverman.com.