Planar Ghosts
Krystal Claxton
AMIT DUTTA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tragically born with a mis-calibrated sense of humor, Krystal Claxton lived in nine US states before the age of thirteen. The combination of the two has left her with an oscillating accent and a habit of laughing at things that aren’t funny. She currently lives in Georgia with her long-suffering spouse, a dog who thinks she’s a cat, and a number of children that is subject to change.
Krystal started writing her first speculative fiction novel in third grade. (It didn’t pan out. The four after weren’t too great either.) By high school it was clear she was meant to be an author so she procrastinated by earning dual Associate of Applied Science degrees in Information Systems. She now works full-time as a level-two computer support technician—when she’s not secretly writing fiction. (Please don’t tell her boss.)
She enjoys breaking Heinlein’s Rules and attending Dragon Con (and any other function she can get away with) in costumes of her favorite fictional characters.
Her short fiction has appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Fireside Fiction Company, Daily Science Fiction, and Unidentified Funny Objects 3.
Keep up with her at KrystalClaxton.com or on Twitter @krystalclaxton.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Amit Dutta discovered the creative urge as a wee entity growing up in the African nation of Malawi. Science fiction and fantasy literature were the first to capture his imagination. Since nobody he asked seemed to think that art could actually be a career, he trotted off to university in Canada and focused on astrophysics. It was very sci-fi, after all.
A series of events, otherwise known as life, left Amit entangled in what might loosely be called “a career in IT.” It led to him wondering where he had misplaced twelve of his years. They weren’t in the fridge, and he dared not look under the bed. Amit moved to New Zealand where the slumbering creative phoenix finally erupted into the bleary-eyed, caffeine-fueled, solitary autodidactic artist he has become. Over three years he obsessively developed his skills and successfully destroyed his social life.
He quit his daily grazing at the cubicle farm in early 2015 to dedicate more time to his art. The automated mortgage payment glares at him in outright suspicion.
Amit currently hermits himself in a remote bush valley north of Wellington. He feeds cat food to the family of eels living under the ford across the river. The cat isn’t impressed.