Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. He told stories to imaginary friends and learned to type on his brother's manual typewriter even though he couldn't reach the keys. (He types with the keyboard in his lap still today.) He couldn't imagine any career but writing fiction... until his algebra teacher said, "This is a program. You should write one of these."

Fast forward 30 years of programming, writing, and teaching. He was named an MVP by Microsoft for his work with the developer community. He is an avid role-playing gamemaster, but that didn't satisfy his storytelling urge. He wrote, but he never submitted until his brother-in-law read a chapter and said, "That's not a chapter. That's a story. Send it in." It won second place in the Baen Memorial Writing Contest and earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that!

Martin hasn't stopped writing (or programming) since. His work has appeared in Analog, Galaxy's Edge, Digital Science Fiction, and select service garages worldwide. His novella "Murder on the Aldrin Express" was reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection and in Year's Top Short SF Novels 4. Learn more at http://Shoemaker.Space.

SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR

As an author, Martin has sold stories to the following markets:

"Not Close Enough", in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 2013.

"Murder on the Aldrin Express", in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013.

"Brigas Nunca Mais", in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2015.

"Il Gran Cavallo", in Galaxy's Edge #5, November 2013.

"Pallbearers", in Galaxy's Edge #7, March 2014.

"Murder on the Aldrin Express", in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois.

"Murder on the Aldrin Express", in The Year's Top Short SF Novels 4.

"The Night We Flushed the Old Town" in Therefore I Am: Digital Science Fiction Volume 2.

"Father-Daughter Outing", the cover story for Heir Apparent: Digital Science Fiction Volume 4.

"Gruff Riders" in The Gruff Variations: Writing for Charity Anthology, Vol. 1

His writing has also won the following awards:

Writers of the Future, Quarter 1, 2011: Finalist, "The Mother Anthony"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 2, 2011: Honorable Mention, "Father-Daughter Outing"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 3, 2011: Honorable Mention, "Scramble"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 4, 2011: Semi-Finalist, "A Most Auspicious Star"

The 2012 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest: Second Place, "Scramble"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 1, 2012: Finalist, "One Last Chore for Grandpa"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 2, 2012: Honorable Mention, "Incoming"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 3, 2012: Honorable Mention, "Fog Traffic"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 4, 2012: Honorable Mention, "Mama's Little Angel"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 1, 2013: Honorable Mention, "The Books of Cheswick"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 2, 2013: Honorable Mention, "Killing Buddy"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 3, 2013: Honorable Mention, "In Its Shadow"

Writers of the Future, Quarter 1, 2014: THIRD PLACE, "Unrefined"

In addition, he has self-published seven stories and a collection, and has more in the works.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE ANALYST

Martin is a software developer with 29 years experience in the industry. He has worked in the fields of color science, on-line shopping, databases, material handling, medical imaging, and customer relations management.

His most popular presentations are his UML courses, which he wrote and presents. As a side effort in his UML work, Martin has written two books on UML:

UML Applied: A .NET Perspective from Apress.

Ulterior Motive Lounge: UML, 80s Flicks, and Bunny Slippers, the world's first UML comic strip. Originally published online in 2009, this successful comic strip let Martin use humor and simple examples to teach UML to a wide audience. It is now collected in a version for Kindle.

Peter J. Wacks, born as Jebediah Jason Zarathustra Janney Shults, was quickly reminted to a sane name yet never really recovered a sense of normalcy in his life.

Peter (or Zarth, whatever, it’s cool) has travelled to 37 countries, hitchhiked across the United States (very funny, no, he didn’t hitchhike to Hawaii), and backpacked across Europe. He loves fast cars, running 5Ks, space travel, and armchair physics.

In the past, Peter has been an actor and game designer, but he loves writing most and has done a ton of it, which can be found by looking him up online (even if it seems a little cyber-stalkery, don’t worry, go for it!)

Since he doesn’t think anyone reads these things anyway, he will mention Strawberry Daiquiris, Laphroaig, great IPAs, and really clever puns are the best way to start conversations with him.

Are you still there?

The Bio is over.

Go Read.

Twitter: @PeterJWacks

FB: https://www.facebook.com/PJWacks/

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is a #1 bestselling author and Hugo-nominated editor of adult and children's speculative fiction, including 11 novels and 21 anthologies. His debut novel, The Worker Prince received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club's Year's Best Science Fiction Releases. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online and include canon entries in The X-Files, Predator, Joe Ledger, Monster Hunter International, Aliens Vs. Predator, and Decipher's WARS, amongst others. As book editor he was the first editor on Andy Weir's bestseller The Martian and has edited books by such luminaries as Alan Dean Foster, Tracy Hickman, Frank Herbert, Mike Resnick, Todd McCaffrey, Jean Rabe and more. His anthologies as editor include Predator: Eyes of The Demon, Aliens Vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers, Infinite Stars and Predator: If It Bleeds for Titan Books, Shattered Shields with co-editor Jennifer Brozek, Mission: Tomorrow, Galactic Games, Little Green Men--Attack! with Robin Wayne Bailey, and The Monster Hunter Tales with Larry Correia all for Baen, Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6, Beyond The Sun and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for various small presses and Joe Ledger: Unstoppable with Jonathan Maberry for St. Martin's Press. His forthcoming books include the Novel Shortcut (which is being developed for film), and the anthologies Joe Ledger: Unbreakable with Jonathan Maberry for Journalstone, The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie with Henry Herz and Robots Through The Ages with Robert Silverberg for Blackstone. Find him online at:

Website/Blog: www.bryanthomasschmidt.net

Twitter: @BryanThomasS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryanthomass?ref=hl

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3874125.Bryan_Thomas_Schmidt

A Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, and winner in the Writers of the Future Contest, Eric James Stone has had stories published in Year's Best SF 15, Analog, Nature, and Kevin J. Anderson's Blood Lite anthologies of humorous horror, among other venues. His first novel, Unforgettable, was published by Baen.

One of Eric's earliest memories is of seeing an Apollo moon-shot launch on television. That might explain his fascination with space travel. His father's collection of old science fiction ensured that Eric grew up on a full diet of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.

While getting his political science degree at Brigham Young University, Eric took creative writing classes. He wrote several short stories, and even submitted one for publication, but after it was rejected he gave up on creative writing for a decade.

During those years Eric graduated from Baylor Law School, worked on a congressional campaign, and took a job in Washington, DC, with one of those special interest groups politicians always complain that other politicians are influenced by. He quit the political scene in 1999 to work as a web developer in Utah.

In 2002 he started writing fiction again, and in 2003 he attended Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp. In 2007 Eric got laid off from his day job just in time to go to the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has since found a new web development job.

From 2009-2014, Eric was an assistant editor for Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Eric lives in Orem, Utah, with his wife, Darci, a high school physics teacher, and their children, Honor and Link. His website is www.ericjamesstone.com.

Alex Shvartsman is a writer, editor, and translator from Brooklyn, NY. He's the author of The Middling Affliction (Caezik, 2022) and Eridani's Crown (UFO Publishing, 2019) fantasy novels.

Over 120 of his short stories appeared in various magazines and anthologies since 2010, including Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, etc. He's the winner of the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction.

He edits the Unidentified Funny Objects series of anthologies and Future Science Fiction Digest. His other projects as editor include The Cackle of Cthulhu (Baen Books), Humanity 2.0 (Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick), Coffee: 14 Caffeinated Tales of the Fantastic (UFO Publishing) and Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse (Deorc Enterprises).

You can visit his official home page and blog at alexshvartsman.com

Brian Trent's speculative fiction appears regularly in the world's top markets, including Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, COSMOS, Nature, Galaxy's Edge, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Terraform, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, The Year's Best Military and Adventure Sci-Fi, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, The Cackle of Cthulhu, Third Flatiron, Flame Tree's Gothic Series, and much more.

The author of the novels Ten Thousand Thunders (hard SF) and the fantasy/historical series Rahotep and its sequel The God and the Gate, Trent is also a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest and received the 2019 Baen Books Readers' Choice Award for his story "Crash-Site", which is also set in his popular "War Hero" series of stories and novels. Trent lives in New England. His website is www.briantrent.com.

Sean Patrick Hazlett is a technologist, finance professional, and science fiction, fantasy, horror, and non-fiction author and editor working in Silicon Valley. He has published over a hundred research reports on clean energy, semiconductors, and enterprise software including Wall Street's first comprehensive market analysis of opportunities in the smart grid, which was cited twice in The Economist (See "Making Every Drop Count" and "Smart Grids: Wiser Wires"). He is a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest and his fiction has appeared in publications such as Terraform, Vastarien, Writers of the Future, Grimdark Magazine, Galaxy's Edge, Abyss & Apex, Fictionvale Magazine, Plasma Frequency Magazine, Kasma SF, The Colored Lens, NewMyths.com, and Mad Scientist Journal, among others.

Before working in finance and technology, Sean was a research associate at the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project where he worked on energy security issues that included the United States-India Strategic Partnership and policy options for confronting Iran's nuclear program. He won the 2006 Policy Analysis Exercise Award at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for his work on policy solutions to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Sean also spent time at Booz Allen Hamilton as an intelligence analyst focusing on strategic war games and simulations for the Pentagon. Before graduate school, Sean was a cavalry officer in the United States Army where he trained American forces for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the National Training Center.

Sean holds a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and bachelor's degrees in History and Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

I grew up reading Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, Octavia Butler, and Arthur C. Clarke. My own work combines New Wave and modern sensibilities, exploring big ideas in depth and detail.

My short work has thus far been published in Compelling Science Fiction, and is slated for publication in an upcoming print anthology.

A novel taking place in the same universe as "Twiceborn" is in the works.

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