New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, storm chaser, and adventurer. She has authored over 20 books and 50 short stories, including AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (Candlewick), Enchanted (HMH) and Prince Phillip’s Birthday Waltz (Disney). Alethea has received the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant, the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She has been twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and the Dragon Award. Alethea also narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and contributes regular book reviews to NPR. Born in Vermont, she currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie. Find out more about Princess Alethea at aletheakontis.com

JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 3-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, anthology editor, writing teacher, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series starring Ian Somerhalder. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, epic fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Kagen the Damned, Ink, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Don’t Turn out the Lights: A Tribute to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, The Punisher: Naked Kills and Bad Blood. His Rot & Ruin young adult novel was adapted into the #1 comic on Webtoon and is being developed for film by Alcon Entertainment. He the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine. He lives in San Diego, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com

Jim Beard pounds out adventure fiction with classic pulp style and flair.

A native Toledoan, he was introduced to comic books at an early age by his father, who passed on to him a love for the medium and the pulp characters who preceded it. After decades of reading, collecting and dissecting comics, Jim became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time he's written official Spider-Man, X-Files, and Planet of the Apes prose fiction, Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic stories, and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history.

His prose work also includes GOTHAM CITY 14 MILES, a book of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series; SGT. JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER, a collection of pulp ghost stories featuring an Edwardian occult detective; MONSTER EARTH, a shared-world giant monster anthology; and CAPTAIN ACTION: RIDDLE OF THE GLOWING MEN, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure.

Jim is also the co-publisher at Flinch Books, a small-press pulp house.

Please visit him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/thebeardjimbeard

Jacopo della Quercia is a scholar with Humanities New York, a former staffer of the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign, a writer for Reader's Digest, and the author of two novels: 'The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy' and the William Shakespeare spy-thriller 'License to Quill'. He lives in Upstate New York surrounded by a large and loving Italian family. Visit him on Twitter @Jacopo_della_Q and online at www.JacopoDellaQuercia.com.

JON McGORAN is the award-winning author of ten novels, including the near-future YA SF thrillers SPLICED, SPLINTERED and SPIKED, from Holiday House Books. SPLICED was named to the American Library Association's inaugural LITA Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable List, and is nominated for the 2019/2020 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award. Both SPLICED and SPLINTERED have been honored by American Bookseller’s Association as ABC Best Books for Young Readers.

McGoran's other books include the acclaimed thrillers DRIFT, DEADOUT, and DUST UP, and the novella DOWN TO ZERO, all from Tor/Forge Books, as well as THE DEAD RING, based on the TV show The Blacklist. Writing as D. H. Dublin, he is the author of the forensic crime thrillers FREEZER BURN, BLOOD POISON, and BODY TRACE, from Penguin Books. His short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies, and his story Bad Debt was shortlisted for Best American Mystery Stories, 2014. He is a founding member of the Philadelphia Liars Club, a group of published authors dedicated to supporting writers, readers, and the people who bring them together, and co-host of The Liars Club Oddcast, a podcast about writing and creativity. When not working on his own books, he helps works with other writers as a developmental editor and writing coach.