I grew up near Pennsylvania Amish country and began writing while living in San Francisco.

Odd bits of information, like historical footnotes, often turn into stories.

A museum exhibit sparked "Mud," in Terra! Tara! Terror. WWI was mechanized slaughter, a "modern" war with tanks and planes, but also cavalry charges! Imperial War Museum photos show soldiers with dogs and cats, which killed rats in the trenches, and boosted the men's morale. Dogs were trained to carry messages, lay communications wire, and haul machine guns. Animals were decorated. My grandfather told stories about the horses and mules used in WWI.

Genealogy prompted "My Jack" in Flame Tree's Urban Crime. My great- and great-great-grandmothers emigrated from London, England in 1886.

Recently read: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky, the saga of that common substance; Heretics: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy, a graphic novel by Steven and Ben Nadler. The Library Book by Susan Orlean, and lots by Jody Picoult!

I taught at San Lorenzo Middle School in King City, California for thirty-six years before retiring in June of 2006. Phyllis, my wife of 43 years, and I still reside in King City. We have two sons – Jeremy and Jon.

I am a life-long rock-climber and mountaineer. I've made numerous ascents in the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, though my home crags are in Pinnacles National Monument. Three of my short stories about climbing were published in the Sierra Club's Ascent. I converted a story named "Three's a Crowd" into a radio play and it was broadcast on KUSF on November 22nd, 2006.

Five of my books have been published: Joel in Tananar, Flower Tumbles, The Dragon and the Lemon Tree, Chaos Gate and Dawn Drums. Dawn Drums awarded both the New Mexico Book Awards 2014 Tony Hillerman Award for Best Fiction and the Arizona Authors Association 2014 First Place Award for published fiction.

My writing has won a number of other awards. "Dogwood Dream" won first place in New Millennium Writing's 2011 short fiction contest. My novella "Vienna Station" won the 2011 Galaxy prize and was published as an e-book. It is available for Kindle here on Amazon. My short story "Lulu Garlic, Contraband" was broadcast on KVPR, an NPR affiliate. Here’s the link: http://kvpr.org/post/lulu-garlic-contraband-robert-walton-valley-writers-read

Last year, my "Sockdologizer" was awarded first place in the 2020 Saturday Writers Everything Children's contest.

Please do contact me via my blog if you have questions about my writing!

Columbkill Noonan was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. She teaches Anatomy and Physiology at a university in Maryland. Her writing is mostly speculative fiction (especially stories that involve mythology, or the supernatural, or any combination thereof). Some of her work is a bit on the spooky side, but usually there is a touch of humor (who says the afterlife has to be serious?)

When she's not teaching or writing, Columbkill can be found with her rescue horse (whose name is Mittens), hiking in the woods, or doing yoga of all kinds (aerial yoga and SUP yoga are particular favorites). She is an avid traveler, and most of her travels have resulted in a story (The Unexpected Travelers was written after a seriously oxygen-deprived trip to Machu Picchu). You can visit her on her website, http://columbkill.weebly.com/, or on Twitter @ColumbkillNoon1, or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ColumbkillNoonan

Stanley B. Webb came to be in the year 1961. He grew up in central New York State, near the shoreline of Lake Ontario. He has worked as a restaurant dishwasher, a video rental clerk, a diner cook, and in an automobile factory. He currently lives on a small homestead with his family.

Stanley thanks everyone who has read his work.

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Lisa Timpf spent her early years living next to a farm on the outskirts of Simcoe, Ontario. Though the family moved into town when Timpf was nine years old, this early experience sparked a life-long interest in nature, especially birds and butterflies.

Timpf received a Bachelor of Physical Education degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, then went on to study Sport History at the Master's level at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During that time, she worked part-time as a sports writer at the Halifax Daily News.

After returning to her home province of Ontario, Timpf secured a job at Honda of Canada Mfg. in Alliston, Ontario, where she worked in a variety of roles including Human Resources and Communications, before retiring in February of 2014.

Timpf's writing credits include several columns written for the Creemore Echo, in an independent newspaper in Creemore, Ontario, as well as appearances in six Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, and pieces written for Small Farm Canada. She has also self-published a collection of creative non-fiction and poetry entitled A Trail that Twines: Reflections on Life and Nature, and a non-fiction book, St. George's Lawn Tennis Club: The First Hundred Years.

Star Trek (The Original Series) and authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton sparked an interest in science fiction in Timpf's teenage years. After her retirement, Timpf tried her hand at writing sci-fi short stories, poetry, and book reviews. Her sci-fi writing has appeared in anthologies such as Future Days, Dogs of War, From a Cat's View, Enter the Rebirth, and Mother's Revenge, and magazines and online zines such as Bards and Sages Quarterly, New Myths, Star*Line, Liminality, and Apparition Lit. Her collection of speculative haibun poetry, In Days to Come, is available from Hiraeth Publishing.

In her younger years, Timpf was an avid athlete, participating in softball, field hockey, ball hockey, ice hockey, basketball, broomball, volleyball, badminton and track and field at various points in her life. Now confined to less strenuous pursuits, she enjoys organic gardening, cycling, and bird-watching.

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.

Prior to becoming a published author, Geoff was heavily involved in the roleplaying game community and wrote several game products - some of which have been published by Expeditious Retreat Press.

His first short novel, The Tunnelers, was published in 2011 by Solstice Publishing. He has since been published by Metahuman Press, AE SciFi, KnightWatch Press, McGraw-Hill, and Exile Editions. He primarily writes horror, but is willing to give anything a whirl.

Geoff lives in South Mountain with a lovely and captivating stone-carving, bagpipe-playing witch, and her many cats.

@WordForrest

http://jlforrest.com

Active Member—Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America—http://sfwa.org

J.L. Forrest writes from the cool, wet techno-jungles of the Pacific Northwest, the frosty Rocky Mountains, and the narrow, ancient streets of Roma.

He is the author of numerous short stories and novels, and he has published works both science fictional and fantastical with the likes of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Crossed Genres, Third Flatiron, the Robot Cowgirl Press, and others.

Jordan Ashley Moore was born in the mysterious swamplands of Louisiana. When not busy battling cultists of Cthulhu he writes science fiction and fantasy and reads ancient literature on YouTube as the Ancient Literature Dude.

John Kennedy was born in Holmfirth and brought up in the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire. His first brush with the writing world was when a poem of his was runner up in a competition at school and was published. John has done plenty to earn a crust over the years, including peeling bulbs in Holland and busking round Europe. But about twenty years ago he settled in the North East and took up a lecturing post. He’s had some sci fi published in anthologies and continues to put out the occasional short story in that genre, because he loves it too and hates the idea that writers must limit themselves to one world. For his crime fiction, he’s been shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger and the Exeter prize and longlisted for the Bath Novel prize. The Trauma Pool, published by Sharpe books, is his first novel.