Born in the Year of the Dragon, Vonnie Winslow Crist is author of award-winning short stories, poems, and books. An active member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Society of Children's Book Writers & illustrators, and National League of American Pen Women - she taught creative writing for the Maryland State Arts Council for 10 years.

"The Enchanted Dagger" is a Compton Crook Award Finalist and Maryland Writers Association Book Award Winner. Both "Owl Light" and "The Greener Forest" are eFestival of Words Short Story Collection Award Winners. "The Greener Forest," "The Enchanted Dagger," and "Owl Light" were voted among the Top Ten books for Young Adults in the P&E Reader's Poll.

As an illustrator, she's had over 1,000 illustrations published in books, magazines, and calendars.

She is an avid JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis fan, and a firm believer in the magical world that surrounds us! A clover-hand who has found so many 4-leafed clovers she keeps them in jars, Vonnie is quite fond of Harry Potter & Hogwarts, The Hunger Games, A Song of Ice & Fire, Star Wars, Star Trek, and everything Faery!

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Claire can't remember a time when writing wasn't part of her life. From the time she was a pre-teen, she wrote stories, most of them romances. She used to write stories with her friends, with each of them choosing a famous person or a character from their favorite TV series, and model the novels around that. One of her earliest stories, unfortunately lost to time, centered around the 1970s series Starsky and Hutch (she was partial to Starsky).

Although she read primarily fantasy and science fiction as a teenager, it didn't take long for Claire to discover Harlequin romances and their happily-ever-after endings. In a time when book covers would be ripped off the books for returns and then the actual books resold on the second-hand market, Claire devoured these coverless romances (and she regrets her role in the copyright violation), but always wanted to know what happened behind closed doors.

Fast forward and life, as life will, took precedence over creativity. She continued to write on and off, but it kept taking a back seat to other priorities such as paying the bills. When she started reading romances again, several years ago, Claire was delighted to find that the bedroom boundary first got broken, using euphemisms, and then romances went to their natural place of plain English and intense sexual situations. To her, anything goes within the boundaries of a loving relationship. She decided, if she enjoyed reading it, then she could take that natural next step and write it. And so a revived writing career was born.

Early literary influences include Anne McCaffrey, most notably her Dragonriders of Pern series, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Elizabeth Lowell. Current authors she admire include C.L. Wilson, Nalini Singh, and Marjorie Liu.

Claire has many irons in the fire, most notably her first foray into urban fantasy as well as a paranormal series and many contemporary romances. The books she has self-published are just the beginning of what she hopes will be a long and rewarding career that brings romance to people.

The first book in her paranormal series, called "Fire Danger" is now available on Amazon!

Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, Claire now lives in Los Angeles. In addition to writing she has an office job she loves, does animal rescue, reads and goes to movies. She loves to hear from fans, so feel free to drop her a line!

Stacey Jaine McIntosh was born in Perth, Western Australia where she still resides with her husband and four children.

Although her first love has always been writing she once toyed with being a Cartographer and subsequently holds a Diploma in Spatial Information Services.

In 2011 she had her first short story Freya published in an anthology, since that time more stories have followed.

Stacey dedicated her novel Solstice to her mother who passed away unexpectedly in 2008, and she is currently working on several other novels simultaneously.

When not with her family or writing she enjoys photography, genealogy, history, Arthurian myths and witchcraft.

Kevin J. Kennedy is a horror author, editor, anthologist and poet. He is also the owner of KJK Publishing.

He lives in the heart of Scotland with his wife and his thee cats, Carlito, Ariel and Luna. He can be found on Facebook most days if you want to chat with him.

The stars align, eldritch monstrosities awaken and somewhere in England, K.T.Tate is struck with feverish creativity. Inspired to write weird fiction, dark tales and strange stories, she commits them to paper in the hopes of enthralling her readers. Or at least appeasing her abominable muses and having a nice cup of tea.

G. Allen Wilbanks, an internationally best-selling author on Amazon, is a retired police officer living in Northern California. For twenty-five years he wrote collision and crime reports to pay the bills while writing short fiction at nights to keep himself sane. In 2016, he retired from real life to focus on fantasy full time.

He is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and has had over 200 short stories published in Deep Magic, Daily Science Fiction, Mythic, The Colored Lens, as well as many other magazines, e-zines and anthologies from all over the world.

He has published two short story collections of his own as well as multiple novels.

His novels include, When Darkness Comes, published in 2017, and A Life of Adventure which debuted as one of Amazon's Hot New Releases in July, 2020.

For more information about the author and his current writing projects, please visit www.gallenwilbanks.com.

Sue Marie St. Lee writes tales that challenge your imagination and poems that touch your heart — one way or another. She has featured in several international horror anthologies including Black Hare Press releases. Her poems and prose can be found on Spillwords Press. A short fantasy tale, Unseen Magic, appears on The Paper Djinn. Her most recent work, Rhapsodie de Claire, appears in an anthology inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and is available on Amazon.

Amber M. Simpson is a dark speculative fiction writer from Northern Kentucky with a penchant for horror and fantasy. Her fiction has been featured in multiple themed anthologies as well as online. She has acted as Assistant Editor for Fantasia Divinity Magazine since 2017, where she's gotten to work with many talented authors from all over the world.

While she loves to create dark worlds and diverse characters, her greatest creations of all are her sons, Maxamus and Liam, who keep her feet on the ground even while her head is in the clouds.

To learn more, visit: https://ambermsimpson.com.

Sandy Butchers is an author and an artist, known for her elaborate dystopian sci-fi worlds and creature designs. After living in Scandinavia for a year and traveling throughout the world, she now settled in the countryside along with a variety of pets and maps on which 'X' marks the spot.

With the launch of The Singularian Grimoire Anthologies as monthly, illustrated novellas in 2021, she's set a new bar for illustrated science fiction, breaking the boundaries of self-publishing through crowdsourced media. Today she gives lectures on how to start your own creative franchise and using indie platforms to become successful, along with conference panels and podcasts.

For more information on her stories, go to www.TheSingularian.net

Dawn DeBraal lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband Red, two small dogs, and a cat. She has discovered her love of telling a good story can be written. Dawn also writes under the pen name of Garrison McKnight. Along with the books on these pages, Dawn has been published in many online magazines. She was one of the Falling Star Magazine's 2019 Pushcart nominees, has a song published in the House of Harmony, International Habitat for Humanity Song Book and, was a finalist in the "Great American Song Writing Contest." in 2016

Kelly Matsuura grew up in Victoria, Australia, but always dreamed she would live abroad. She has lived in China, the USA, and she now lives permanently in Nagoya, Japan.

Kelly's stories have been published by Harbinger Press, Black Hare Press, A Murder of Storytellers, Ink and Locket Press, and many more. She also publishes her own short story collections, The Natura Series.

As the creator and editor for Insignia Stories, Kelly promotes Asian speculative fiction from writers around the globe, and publishes small ebook anthologies with various Asian fantasy themes.

Thomas Sturgeon Jr was born in March 14th, 1986 to his parents. His birthplace is in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He is 34 and just had his first book published called , "Red Carnival". During his teen years he found out that he had mental health issues which made it harder for him to achieve what he wanted out of life itself. He arrived to finally achieve his dreams. He has been published in 23 anthologies. Some teachers said that he never would achieve success in the writing field. He had a few teachers rooting for him to do his best. He was a very early reader and started writing at the age of 13. His favorite authors are R.L. Stine and Stephen King.

He's a very intelligent person despite his disabilities with a kind and loving heart. He cares about people. He was once even told a few year's before he got his book published that his work was good and saw that people really enjoyed listening to his poetry at Ziggy's Underground Music Bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He made great friends with a singer and now has a poetry album cd called "Master of Storms". Thomas also writes lyrics to song's. He longs to have his own place again. He also loves horror movie's and video games. His favorite horror director is George A. Romero and the living dead series. His favorite video game series is "Resident Evil". He is currently at work on a second short story collection.

Curtis A. Deeter is an author of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. He lives in Ohio with his beautiful wife, Danielle, and his insanely, mad-scientist-level genius son, Theodore. When he is not writing, he can be found reading, discovering new music, and taste-testing craft beer at local breweries.

Umair Mirxa lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan. His first published story, 'Awareness', appeared on Spillwords Press. 'Anonymous' in Zombie Pirate Publishing's anthology, 'Flash Fiction Addiction', is his first story in print.

The publication of these stories is the realization of a lifelong dream he first saw as a kid after reading 'Adventures of a Wishing-Chair' by Enid Blyton. The early dream, a casual hope of one day telling stories to the world himself, became a goal when his mother bought him the two-volume set, 'Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it had transformed into a burning ambition by the time he'd finished reading 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He remains a massive Tolkien fan, loves everything to do with mythology, fantasy, and history, and wishes with all his heart that dragons were real. When he's not writing, he enjoys reading novels and comic books, playing video games, listening to music, and watching movies, TV shows, and football as an Arsenal FC fan.

As a writer from Ontario, Canada, Brianna Witte has a passion for spinning tales of sci-fi, horror and fantasy. She enjoys taking readers on a ride through the realm of fiction by weaving twisted, futuristic and magical stories that materialise from her wildly creative dreams and vivid imagination. Brianna has had her first novel, “Witches and Vampires”, published in December 2019. To date she has had a number of short stories and drabbles published, as well as her short story, ‘The Hunt’ commended for the 2019 Author of Tomorrow award.