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PUBLISHER - Dianne Helm - Dianne Helm is President and owner of Helm Publishing, founded in 1998. She fell into publishing by meeting a writer/employee at one of her project management assignments. After an employee approached her with a manuscript he had been working on, he asked if she would edit the copy, she not only edited but offered to serve as his agent for query submission. After 250 rejection letters, Dianne stepped back and started submitting to publishing houses. After another 250 rejection letters, she decided the work was just too good to let go. She formed Helm Publishing in 1998, and published the first manuscript. Dianne was hooked. Since then she receives about 2000 manuscripts a year, and publishes about 2% of all queries received. Her authors live all over the USA and Dianne travels to trade shows, festivals, and publishing events, supporting and helping to provide promotion for books and the passion she has for reading.
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SHANE BERRYHILL -
Faster than a not-so-speeding tortoise! More powerful than a five-year-old girl with the flu! Able to leap tall speed bumps in a single bound! Look, there at the computer! It’s an illustrator! It’s a writer! It’s SHANE! Shane signed with PMA Literary and Film Management, Inc in August 2004. By November of that same year, PMA had acquired a deal with Starscape Books / Tor for The Adventures of Chance Fortune series. Chance Fortune and The Outlaws was released in July 2006.
Shane lives with his wife Lesley in Chattanooga, Tennessee and continues to work on the next books in The Adventures of Chance Fortune series, along with several other novels and projects.
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Ed Crandell -
http://www.westworld.mysite.com/
My name is Ed Crandell is the author of West World. He was born near St. Louis, Missouri, in 1970. He attended Northwest High School - then located in House Springs, Missouri - and took one course in creative writing. Even at this early date, he had in mind an idea for a sci-fi western. It wasn't until several years later, in August of 1998, that Ed put pen to paper to begin West World. That afternoon he wrote the opening two paragraphs of the story - about a planet named Endia - and then went to a party with some friends. That was the day he met the woman who would become his wife. Ironically, her name is Indhira, which in it's Spanish pronunciation sounds very much like the name of the planet created for the story. Ed finished West World in June of 2002, and went straight into writing Return to West World.
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CHRISTINA BARBER An award-winning author of speculative fiction works noted for their darktones, Christina Barber loves to create dark fantasy worlds for readers. Christina Barber’s works have won acclaim for capturing thereader’s imagination, taking them into other worlds where anything canhappen. With a focus on the paranormal and dark forces of evil, Christina’s books give the readers a taste of what happens when real life collides head on with characters from dark, demonic worlds.
Encouraged by her fourth grade teacher, Christina has always been captivated by the craft of writing. She now writes full time.
Christina’s published books include Seely’s Pond (Dark Urban Fantasy, April 2008), Spirits of Georgia’s Southern Crescent(Non-Fiction, August 2008) and Greystone (2006 Speculative Romance). Christina’s shortstories appear in magazines and anthologies across the writing spectrum.
While Christina spent most of her life growing up in the suburbs of NewJersey, she currently resides in Georgia, with her husband and daughter. She happily shares her home with three dogs, and two cats.
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D.A. Adams: In 1990, he entered Walters State Community College on the Rex Dockery Memorial Scholarship. In college, he realized that stringing words together to tell stories was fun, so he boldly set out to conquer the world as a writer. In 1992, he moved to Memphis, TN to attend the former Memphis State University. For three years, he studied writing under the likes of Margaret Skinner, Brett Singer, Tom Russell, and Rick Lyons. During these formative years, D. A. continued to excel at drunken stupidity, but conquering the world proved a bit more challenging than he had anticipated. He graduated from the renamed The University of Memphis in 1995.
For two years, D. A. worked tirelessly to produce professional quality short stories and managed to place one story and several poems in small literary magazines. During this time, he also abandoned the practice of inebriated public disturbances and became to most of his friends a tedious bore. Once sober, he realized the folly of world conquest and began to focus his efforts more on earning a living.
In 1997, he returned to Memphis for graduate school and studied under Reginald Martin, Randall Kenan, and John Bensko. While in the writing program, several of his peers and even a couple of not-mentioned instructors informed him that he lacked the talent to pursue writing professionally. Thus inspired, he earned his Master of Arts in Writing in 1999 and entered into a long period of writer’s block.
After earning the degree, he took a position teaching composition, speech, and business communications for a small college in East Tennessee. For several years, he served as an Assistant Professor of English, which is a fancy way of saying that he worked too many hours a week for slave wages. Frustrated by the poor pay and the necessity of working weekend jobs to survive, he began to refocus his efforts on writing. Despite an overwhelming sense of certainty that writing was his true calling, D. A. struggled to rediscover his narrative voice.
Then, sometime in 2002, while watching The Two Towers, an epiphany came to him, and he realized that what had originally inspired him to write was fantasy action-adventure. For several months, he pondered the idea of developing such a story and thus inspired, in 2003, began work on The Brotherhood of Dwarves. The novel was released in 2005 and has been widely embraced by fans as a fast-paced, powerful tale of friendship and betrayal. In spring 2008, the sequel, Red Sky at Dawn, was released and has been acclaimed as a rich, well-crafted adventure that keeps readers riveted until the end. Presently, he has begun work on the third installment of the five book series.D. A. Adams is also the father of two sons, who reside in Florida with their mother. Although proud of his successes as a novelist, he maintains that his boys are his greatest accomplishment in this world. Any parent reading this can probably concur.
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Robert Freese - Robert Freese divides his time between fiction and contributing to various film magazines. Shivers (2008, eTreasures Publishing) is his most recent collection of short horror tales. Bijou of the Dead, his 2007 debut novel, will be re-released by Stone Garden Publishing. He co-authored the giant movie trivia book Lights, Camera, Trivia (2008, BearManor Media). 2009 will see the release of his psycho-alien sci-fi/horror book The Santa Thing (Stone Garden Publishing) as well as In Laymon's Terms (Cemetery Dance), the Richard Laymon tribute tome. He contributes regularly to The Phantom of the Movies' Videoscope Magazine and Scary Monsters Magazine. www.robertfreese.comhttp://www.robertfreese.com
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Michael D. Ambrosio -
Michael was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. A graduate of Delaware County Community College (A.A.S. Electronics) and Widener University (B.S. Technical and Industrial Administration), Michael served in the Pa. Air National Guard as a weapons crew chief for 22 years participating in several Middle East tours before retiring.
Michael enjoys science fiction and old-time horror films. When not working as a controls technician at a nearby power plant, he enjoys writing his screenplays and novels, while listening to various types of music. Halloween is his favorite holiday and the fall is his favorite time of the year.
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Born in Sacramento California. Camping and hiking in the woods was a passion for Michael. It really let his imagination grow. He would often imagine the woods as the dinosaurs would have seen them, or perhaps the old cliff dwellings of the Indians. His Grandfather, who was half Comanche and half Dutch, would encourage the stories he would tell him after returning from the woods.
At 10, he heard the story of the Hobbit and it sparked his imagination even further. He would read many books of Greek mythology, ancient Egyptian gods, and any others along those lines. The first book he actually bought for himself was the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
At age fifteen, he moved to Tennessee. As he grew, he started remembering the stories he used to tell his Grandfather Hoos, and the promise he had made to him to share his stories with others. The readers, are helping him to keep the promise. Michael's biggest wish is that one of my stories might ignite your imagination as the Hobbit did with him so many years ago.
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Overcoming the fear and insecurity she'd grown up with enough to scare her stories with the world would be one of the hardest things she'd ever done. There were other, more mundane, problems too. Though she continued to write, life got in the way more times than not. Marriage, and later divorce, raising two daughters as a single mother, and all the day to day crisis that everyone faces. She worked as a registered nurse until health problems forced a career change and a return to college. While there, she wrote essays and stories for the campus newspaper. She also established, edited, and wrote for a newsletter for and about students with disabilities. Reminded of how much she loved to write, she decided to get serious. Cheryel has had articles, humor pieces, and short stories published in local newspapers, small press, and online magazines, and in an anthology to benefit the American Red Cross. She just signed a contract with Samhain Publishing for her first book, a paranomal romance. Cheryel is a member of Romance Writers of America, Smoky Mountain Romance Writers, and the Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal chapter of RWA.
The mother of two grown daughters and grandmother of five (three girls and two boys), Cheryel holds a green belt in Tae Kwon Do, and is involved in disability awareness. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and their two dachshunds, Cujo and Sugar.
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David Boop -
Denver-based author David Boop is a single dad and returning college student. Dave was a journalist before turning to fiction. In fact, he’s done jobs as diverse as DJ, magician and teacher. He’s published a dozen short stories and made two short films. A fixture on the convention circuit, he’s spoken at literary gatherings in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Washington State. He’s part of a cavalcade of authors on Second Life, as well. His novel, She Murdered Me with Science, debuted in August, along with his first anthology, Space Pirates. General interests include noir, Mayan history, and The Blues.
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Nic Brown -
Nic Brown was born, raised and is currently living in Kentucky. He has a black belt in Shaolin Kung-Fu, loves to ski, and travel. He’s taught English in Japan, sold books door-to-door in Montana, and worked as a movie theater projectionist to pay his way through college. Now he works for an international trading company when he’s not busy writing the sequel to his novel "Blood Curse: Werewolf for Hire Book One" or writing about Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror entertainment for his website:www.bmovieman.com.
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Nikki Sinclair - Just a year ago I was leading a quiet existence, minding my own business, when these characters started escaping out of my brain demanding that I write their stories. I tried to explain to them that I am an Information Technology professional and that math, not language arts ruled my life, but they would not listen, stubborn little suckers that they were! My heroes and heroines (featured in my five novel “Virtual” series) were very persuasive and with my family’s encouragement, I began writing their stories. I was flabbergasted! Facing danger and destruction while navigating the rough waters of relationships my characters exist with a zeal and passion for living which sparked a renewed enthusiasm and ardor in my own life! I am an avid romance reader and author of a rapidly growing romance genre, Science Fiction Romance. I create worlds and characters through my writing, hopefully so absorbing, that they will entrance the mind’s eye and enchant the reader’s heart. This is my passion; this is what I strive to share with all my readers.
