JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times best-selling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, action, and steampunk, for adults and teens. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Rot & Ruin, The Orphan Army, Patient Zero, V-Wars, Captain America, and many others. He writes comics for Marvel, Dark Horse, and IDW. And he is the editor of several high-profile anthologies including The X-Files, Nights of the Living Dead, and Scary Out There. Several of his works are in devel- opment for movies and TV. He is a popular workshop leader, keynote speaker and writing teacher. He lives in Del Mar, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com.
JOE MCKINNEY has worked in law enforcement for twenty years, and has been writing professionally for the last ten years. Since publishing his first novel, Dead City, in 2006, he has gone on to win two Bram Stoker Awards and expanded his oeuvre to cover everything from true crime and writings on police procedure to science fiction to cooking and Texas history. The author of more than twenty books, he is a frequent guest at horror and mystery conventions. Joe and his wife Tina have two lovely daughters and make their home in a little town just outside of San Antonio, where he indulges his passion for cooking and makes what some consider to be the finest batch of chili in Texas. You can keep up with all of Joe’s latest releases by friending him on Facebook.
DANA FREDSTI is an ex B-movie actress with a background in theatrical combat (a skill she utilized in Army of Darkness as a sword- fighting Deadite and fight captain). Through seven plus years of volun- teering at EFBC/FCC, Dana’s been kissed by tigers, and had her thumb sucked by an ocelot with nursing issues. She’s addicted to bad movies and any book or film, good or bad, which include zombies. She’s the author of the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets the Walking Dead, and the zombie noir novella A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat. She’s written numerous published articles, essays and shorts, including stories in Cat Fantastic IV, an anthology series edited by Andre Norton (Daw, 1997), Danger City (Contemporary Press, 2005), and Mondo Zombie (Cemetery Dance, 2006). Her essays can be seen in Morbid Curiosity, Issues 2-7. Additionally she’s written several produced low-budget screenplays and currently has another script under option. Dana was also co-writer/associate producer on Urban Rescuers, a documentary on feral cats and TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return), which won Best Documentary at the 2003 Valley Film Festival in Los Angeles.
JADE SHAMES is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. In 2014, he won the Fresh Voices screenplay competition grand prize. His work has appeared in the LA Weekly, Thought Catalog, The Best American Poetry blog, and the anthology Scary Out There (Simon & Schuster).
JAMES R. TUCK is the author of the Deacon Chalk series, co-author of the Robin Hood: Demon’s Bane series (with Debbie Viguie), and (under the name Levi Black) the author of Red Right Hand. He also writes comic books, short stories like the one that appears here, and advice articles for other writers. His information can be found at www.jamesrtuck.com.
LUCAS MANGUM is an author living in Austin, Texas . He enjoys wrestling, cats, wrestling with cats, and drinking craft beer while crafting weird tales. His debut novel, Flesh and Fire, is out now as part of Journalstone’s Double Down series with a new novel by New York Times best-seller Jonathan Maberry and Rachael Lavin. Follow him on Twitter @LMangumFiction and talk to him about books, pro wrestling, and horror movies.
Husband-and-wife team JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE and MARSHEILA (MARCY) ROCKWELL have written more than sixty novels between them, including their first collaborative novel, 7 SYKOS. Other recent novels include The Shard Axe series and a trilogy based on Neil Gaiman’s Lady Justice comic books (Rockwell) and Empty Rooms and Season of the Wolf (Mariotte). They’ve also written dozens of short stories, separately and together. Some of their solo stories are collected in Nine Frights (Mariotte) and Bridges of Longing (Rockwell). Their published or soon-to-be-published collabo- rations include 7 SYKOS and short works “A Soul in the Hand,” “John Barleycorn Must Die,” “A Single Feather,” “X-Files: Transmissions,” and “The Lottons Show.” Other miscellaneous projects include Rhysling Award-nominated poetry (Rockwell) and Bram Stoker Award-nominated comic books (Mariotte). You can find more complete bibliographies and news about upcoming projects, both collaborative and solo, at marsheilarockwell.com and jeffmariotte.com.
NANCY HOLDER is the New York Times best-selling author of over 90 novels and 200 short stories. Among her awards are five Bram Stokers from the Horror Writers Association. Her most recent novels include the young adult thriller The Rules and Ghostbusters: The Official Movie Novelization. She lives in San Diego.
JENNIFER BROZEK is a Hugo Award-nominated editor and a Bram Stoker-nominated author. She has worked in the publishing industry since 2004. With the number of different projects she juggles at one time, Jennifer is often considered a Renaissance woman, but prefers to be known as a wordslinger and optimist. Read more about her at her website www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter at @JenniferBrozek.
LOIS H. GRESH is the New York Times best-selling author (six times) and USA Today best-selling author (thrillers) of 30 books and 65+ short stories. Look for Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions (Titan Books, April 2017), the first in a new trilogy of Sherlock Holmes thrillers. Lois’s books have been published in twenty-two languages. Recent titles include Cult of the Dead and Other Weird and Lovecraftian Tales (Hippocampus, 2015) and Innsmouth Nightmares (editor, PS Publishing, 2015).
JOHN SKIPP is a Renaissance mutant: New York Times best-selling author and editor-turned-filmmaker. His latest book is The Art of Horrible People. His latest film as director is Monsterland. He’s also the editor and curator of Fungasm Press, and is playing more music than he has in years.
When not flying suicide missions with the Skipper, CODY GOODFELLOW has written five novels and three collections; his latest are Repo Shark (Broken River Books) and Rapture of the Deep (Hippocampus Press), respectively. He wrote, co-produced, and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film Stay at Home Dad, which can be viewed on YouTube. He is also a director of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival–San Pedro, and cofounder of Perilous Press, an occa- sional micropublisher of modern cosmic horror. He “lives” in Burbank.
MIKE WATT is a journalist, author, and filmmaker, published in Fangoria, Femmes Fatales, Cinefantastique, Film Threat, and served as the editor of Sirens of Cinema from 2005-2010. He is the author of the non-fiction books Fervid Filmmaking and the Movie Outlaw series; the short-story collection Phobophobia; the novels Suicide Machine and The Resurrection Game; editor of the upcoming 40th Anniversary Special Edition of Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver screenplay. With Amy Lynn Best, he runs the company Happy Cloud Pictures and wrote and/or directed and/or produced The Resurrection Game, Splatter Movie: The Director’s Cut, A Feast of Flesh, Demon Divas and the Lanes of Damnation, and Razor Days.
JOHN DIXON’s Phoenix Island and Devil’s Pocket won back-to-back Bram Stoker Awards and inspired the CBS TV series Intelligence. A former boxer, teacher, and stone mason, John lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with his wife, daughter, and freeloading pets.
WESTON OCHSE is a former intelligence officer and special opera- tions soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than twenty-six books in multiple genres, his military super- natural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie star- ring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war.
YVONNE NAVARRO lives in southern Arizona and is the author of twenty-two published novels and well over a hundred short stories. Her writing has won the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award plus a number of other writing awards. She also draws and paints, and is married to author Weston Ochse. They dote on their three Great Danes, Ghoulie, The Grimmy Beast, and I Am Groot, and a talking, people-loving parakeet named BirdZilla. Visit her at www.yvonnenavarro.com or on Facebook.