An Australian author and journalist, Kris Ashton has published nearly forty short stories in a range of high-profile fiction titles including Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways, Antipodean SF and Dark Moon Digest.

His short story ‘Highway Memorials’ claimed third prize in The Fiction Desk’s 2018 Ghost Story Competition, while ‘Howling Mad’, which appeared in Aurealis #106, was selected for Tangent Online’s 2017 Recommended Reading List.

His sci-fi/horror novel, Invasion at Bald Eagle, published in October 2018, received a glowing review from author Megan Kelly in Aurealis #118 and has enjoyed consistently good sales.

Kris is also a noted essayist and literary critic, receiving an Australian Shadows Award nomination for his analysis of Stephen King’s early fiction. His short stories feature in a scholarly work, Writing Speculative Fiction: Creative and Critical Approaches (Macmillan International), by academic and author Eugen Bacon.

Kris graduated from Western Sydney University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in creative writing and literature, and has been a journalist for more than twenty years. He is a noted travel writer and often incorporates his extensive knowledge of regional Australia into his stories and novels.

In his spare time Kris enjoys reading, writing, film and television (he is a former film critic), and fitness. His favourite authors include Stephen King, Liane Moriarty, Mark Childress, Dan Simmons, John O’Grady, Henry Lawson, M. L. Stedman, John Wyndham and John Steinbeck. He lives in the wilds of south-western Sydney with his wife, two children and a crippling mortgage.

Stephen has been interested in personal growth and bringing out the best of people's potential for over 40 years. Even as a computer programmer, systems analyst and software engineer since the beginning of the '80s, his aim has always been to improve the quality of life for himself and others. This interest led him to learn about psychology and growth techniques, resulting in his becoming an NLP Practitioner (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) in 1993.

At the beginning of 1994, he came into contact with Reiki, attending a First Degree Reiki seminar run by a Reiki Master of The Reiki Network® with his parents. Seeing Reiki's improvements to the whole family, they quickly went on to the Second Degree. It became apparent to him that Reiki was one of the best tools for the non-invasive support of personal growth that he'd encountered, so he applied for training as a Reiki Master within the Network. He finished his year's training mid-1996 and now gives treatments and teaches Reiki in English and German in England, Switzerland and Spain.

In 2004, he began a training course as an adult educator, which he completed in the following year. As part of his training, he created the written training concept that The Reiki Network® now uses.

He has begun working on a second self-help book and a series of smaller information products for personal development. In the meantime, he is writing novels in both science fiction and fantasy, plus several collections of short stories.

Presently, he has switched to writing fiction, specialising in science fiction, space opera, fantasy, urban fantasy, magical realism, slipstream, interstitial, horror, fairy tales, fairy stories, noir, detective fiction, action and thriller, humour, YA, and children's stories. His first science fiction novel was published toward the end of 2021, and a dark urban fantasy anthology comes out in January 2022. He has another four novels, eight anthologies, and a self-help book in development.