Preston Dennett has worked as a carpet cleaner, fast-food worker, data-entry clerk, bookkeeper, landscaper, singer, actor, writer, radio host, television consultant, teacher, UFO researcher, ghost hunter, and more. But his true love has always been speculative fiction.
From 1986 to 1992, he submitted eleven stories to this contest and received eleven rejections. Also rejected by other venues, Preston quit writing speculative fiction. Instead he wrote nonfiction about UFOs. Since then, he has written twenty-two books and more than 100 articles about UFOs and the paranormal.
Seventeen years later, in 2009, realizing his dream of being a science fiction writer was slipping away, he started writing and submitting stories again. He has since sold thirty-seven stories to various venues including Allegory, Andromeda Spaceways, Bards and Sages, Black Treacle, Cast of Wonders, The Colored Lens, Daily Science Fiction, Grievous Angel, Kzine, Perihelion Science Fiction, Sci Phi Journal, Stupefying Stories, T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog, and more, including several anthologies. Since these publications all paid less than professional rates, he was still qualified to win at the time he entered. He earned twelve honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future Contest before winning second place in the first quarter of 2018. It was his forty-seventh submission to the Contest, showing that if you want something bad enough, all you have to do is keep trying, and never give up. The story that follows is his third professional sale.
Preston currently resides in southern California where he spends his days looking for new ways to pay his bills and his nights exploring the farthest edges of the universe. You can visit him virtually at prestondennett.weebly.com
Christine Rhee was born in 1980 in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in different parts of Southern California and Seoul.
She discovered her love of art while completing her degree in Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley. She subsequently earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in animation and illustration at San Jose State University, where she worked on design for plays and music videos, and production of animated films.
Christine loves stories of survival, growth, and transformation, especially as they take on mythic qualities. She adores fables and fairytales in all their retellings. She especially loves sharing Korean traditional stories that have not yet made their way to a wider audience.
Christine works and lives in San Francisco with her husband, newborn son, and two studio bunnies. www.christinerhee.com