Crystal J. Bell

Crystal has been telling stories in one way or another since she was a little girl. Be it to anyone who would listen as an unintelligible three-year-old, poetry in middle school, fan fiction, short stories, a (terrible) romance book in high school, or videos in college, she’s always wanted to connect to others through storytelling. After graduating from CSU with a Bachelor of Arts, she dedicated herself to writing fantasy and horror books, her true passion of becoming a published author the compass she followed. She hasn’t looked back since.

She loves all things poignant and beautiful and has a special place in her heart for the eerie and frightening. Each October she applies special effects makeup to make things a little more interesting (or bloody) and creates eerie photoshoots/videos with friends and family. When she’s not writing, plotting out and designing monsters, reading, or celebrating the best month of the year, she’s at the reservoirs on her stand-up paddleboard, filming weddings, drinking all the lattes, gardening, or in the kitchen cooking with her husband.

A Colorado native, she lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her husband, fur babies, and gill babies. Her debut young adult novel, The Lamplighter, is being released spring 2024 by Flux Books.

Twitter: CJBell_Writes
Website: www.crystaljbell.com
Instagram: crystaljbell
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cjbell_books

Carly Brown

Dr Carly Brown is an award-winning poet and fiction writer based in Scotland. She is the author of a bestselling children’s picture book, I Love St Andrews, and two poetry chapbooks. Known for her lively and witty spoken word poetry, Carly was Scotland’s National Champion of Slam Poetry (2013) and ranked fourth at the World Series of Slam Poetry in Paris. Her debut novella, All the Orphans in the Galaxy, was published in 2022 with Speculative Books and shortlisted for Best Novella in the 2023 Saboteur Awards. 

Carly holds a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and she works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Outside academia, she has led writing workshops with all age groups, from elementary school students to retirees, and in all kinds of environments including prisons, parks, and public libraries. In addition to writing, she loves early modern history and in her spare time volunteers as a costumed historical tour guide at an 18^th century townhouse. 

Originally from Austin, Texas, Carly currently lives in Edinburgh with her partner and a small army of house plants. 

Twitter: https://x.com/TheForthBelle
Website: https://carlyjbrown.com
Blog: https://carlyjbrown.com/news/ 
Newsletter: subscribepage.io/CarlyBrown

Michelle Denham

Michelle Denham is a biracial Korean American living in the desert. She earned her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Arizona, her Master’s at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from University of California, San Diego.
 
Her speculative fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. She is a Full SFWA member, a 2022 alumni of the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop, and a 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction finalist. 

BlueSky:  https://bsky.app/profile/mmdenhamwrites.bsky.social
Website: www.michelledenhamwrites.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mmdenhamwrites/

Sabrina Fedel

Sabrina Fedel grew up daydreaming in a house filled with books. The granddaughter of immigrants, her father was the first to go to college. Sabrina’s parents instilled in her that learning was the best gift they could give her, and she’s never stopped learning or daydreaming.

Sabrina holds her JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an LLM in Information Technology Law from the University of Edinburgh School of Law, with merit. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing, with a concentration in Writing for Young People, from Lesley University. Her debut young adult historical fiction, Leaving Kent State (Harvard Square Editions), garnered critical acclaim and multiple awards, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in various journals including Pedestal Magazine and Lunch Ticket.

Sabrina’s second novel, All Roads Lead to Rome, is available for preorder and arrives June 18^th, 2024, from Delacorte Romance, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Kirkus Reviews calls All Roads Lead to Rome a “frothy romance” in which seventeen-year-old Story Herriot gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to fake date a Scottish celebrity in exchange for a charitable contribution to redeem her dad’s memory. Sabrina’s second novel with Delacorte Romance, All Paths Lead to Paris, arrives Summer 2025, and finds seventeen-year-old fashion influencer, Aurélie McGinley, struggling to choose between her parents’ separate continents, fame and privacy, and friendship and love.

Sabrina is an environmental attorney with the Federal government, where she works to clean up hazardous industrial waste and provide environmentally friendly solutions to civil works challenges.

Sabrina and her family (including the dog) are auxiliary members of a pride of four cats. She loves the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Italy, the Nancy Drew stairs in her 1796 farmhouse, and all things chocolate. When she isn’t writing or giggling because her daughter’s lifelong friends think that she’s super famous, she can be found fighting and making up with Siri in a saga worthy of its own romcom.

You can learn more about Sabrina at www.sabrinafedel.com or find her on social media, most often on Instagram because she loves pretty pictures.

Instagram.com/sabrinafedel
Twitter.com/writeawhile
Facebook.com/sabrinaccfedel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-fedel-7a82b012

Nicholas George

Nicholas George is a Southern California native whose love of words and writing seized him at a young age and never let go. After majoring in journalism at California State University at Fullerton, Nick worked as a newspaper reporter before embarking on an extensive career in public relations and communication management. His work involved managing communications for a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Nick’s love of long-distance walking (he has walked trails in all 50 U.S. states) and England (he’s now tackling all counties in England) inspired his Walk Through England series of mystery novels, all set on group walks in the English countryside. The second book in the series, “A Lethal Walk in Lakeland,” was published in 2025 by Kensington. Another series, featuring retired rock-n’-roller Adam Parrall, will launch later this year with “You’ve Lost That Livin’ Feeling,” published by Severn House.

Nick lives in Pasadena, California, with his husband Bert.

Twitter: @nikatnyte
Website: https://www.nicholasgeorgeauthor.com

Rick Hall

Rick Hall is a former video game developer, long-time educator, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. From 1990 to 2005, he worked as a programmer, designer, and producer on more than a dozen published video game titles, including Ultima Online and Madden NFL. He helped launch Take-Two Interactive and later served as an executive producer at Electronic Arts. Since 2006, Rick has taught at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, UCF’s world-renowned graduate program for game development, where he directs the production track and was honored with the 2024 Outstanding Instruction award.

Before joining Storm, he spent over a decade self-publishing and consulting in creative and educational game design. Rick has also authored several nonfiction books, including Cause and Effect Game Design and Write Characters Using Myers-Briggs. His debut novel, Gnosis, is a paranormal YA urban fantasy about a teen-age parkour enthusiast with a sentient, psychic virus living in her brain.

A Pennsylvania native now living in Orlando, Florida, Rick shares a home with his wife, teenage daughter, three dogs, and an adorably psychopathic cat named Cookie. He’s obsessed with history (his bookshelf holds more than a thousand on history alone), and he builds spreadsheets and writes software tools for the same reason that normal people do yoga or tend their gardens. That’s his zen space. A daily chess player, he once squeezed a draw from a grandmaster, though he has serious doubts he could pull that off a second time. Grandmasters have very long memories.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rhall64
Twitter: https://x.com/Stellerex64
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-hall-885ba/
Website: https://rickhallauthor.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickhall9942/

Betty Hawk

Betty Hawk’s love of storytelling developed at an early age, when she discovered it was the cure to her small-town boredom. For a long time, she kept her stories to herself, but it was during her time studying Apparel Design & Technology at Purdue University that she began to take herself seriously as a writer. Most nights, when she should have been in the sewing lab working on deadlines for the annual fashion show, Betty was holed up in her tiny dorm room, typing away about fashionistas, monsters, and magic.

Once she graduated, Betty moved to New York City, where she’s been able to balance her passion for writing with her career in fashion. When she’s not designing childrenswear or writing books, Betty may venture out for a good cup of coffee or a kitschy dive bar experience, but she’s most likely at home, curled up on the couch with her husband and their rescue bull terrier.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bettyhawkwrites
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bettyhawkwrites/
Website: https://www.bettyhawkwrites.com/

Ry Herman

Ry Herman has worked a variety of jobs, including submissions editor, theatrical technician, and one position which could best be described as typing the number 5 all day long. They are bisexual and genderqueer, and their hobbies include baking bread, playing tabletop roleplaying games, and reading as many books as humanly possible. Although born in the US, Ry is now a permanent resident of Scotland.

Ry’s queer vampire romance duology, Love Bites and Bleeding Hearts, is published by the Jo Fletcher Books imprint of Quercus, and Love Bites has been translated into German and published by Heyne under the title Die Unmöglichkeit bei Tag die Liebe zu Finden (“The Impossibility of Finding Love During the Daytime”). SFX calls them “the sweet, emotionally literate, non-sparkly love story you’ve been looking for” and the Horror Writers’ Association says they are “fun, well-written, queer romantic comedy… brimming with literary and writerly jokes amidst the deeper issues”. Ry is also the author of many stage plays and musicals, which include The Monster and Voices in My Head, both published by Samuel French, and Man On Dog, published by United Stages.

Their next book, This Princess Kills Monsters, forthcoming from The Dial Press, is a retelling of “The Twelve Huntsmen”, one of the Grimm Brothers’ weirdest fairy tales. It takes that tale’s jilted, trouser-wearing fiancée, her eleven identical crossdressing doppelgangers, a talking lion, and of course, the princess, on an extravagant, fantastical quest to save a kingdom, subvert destiny, and fall in love with the perfectly right wrong person.

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ry.herman.5
Twitter:  @ry_herman
Website:  https://ryhermanwrites.wordpress.com/

M.K. Hutchins

M.K. Hutchins often draws on her background in archaeology when writing fantasy and science fiction. She’s the author of several novels, including Drift and The Redwood Palace, along with over thirty short stories appearing in Podcastle, Analog, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. When not writing, she’s usually with her children as they grow veggies, bake, and play games together, though not usually all at the same time. Find her at https://linktr.ee/mkhutchins.

Twitter: @mkhutchins
Website: www.mkhutchins.com
Blog: www.mkhutchins.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mkhutchinsauthor/

Holly Jennings

Holly Jennings grew up in small-town Ontario with a teacher mom who showed her one of the most important places in the world: the local library. But her father wasn’t without his influence too, introducing her to Star Wars, Star Trek, and many other wonderfully geeky fandoms. Through them both, she became a lover of sci-fi novels.

After obtaining her degree in psychology from the University of Ottawa, she worked for several years in administration and business before making the jump to her first real love: storytelling. Through kind and constructive critiques of her stories, she learned she has a special knack for writing “sci-fi action movies in book form.” More often than not, she puts her characters’ martial arts skills or combat training to the test through battles with robots, VR and more.

Her debut novel ARENA released from Ace Books in 2016 and won the American Library Association’s Alex Award. By day, she’s an editor for a financial comparison website. In her spare time, she enjoys playing video games and studying writer’s craft.

Originally from Canada, she lives in Michigan with her husband.

Twitter: @HollyN_Jennings
Website: www.authorhollyjennings.com

J.E. Larson

J.E. Larson’s journey in writing began with a good old-fashioned spiral notebook in middle school. Jotting down stories and characters that filled her imagination and never seemed to leave. As an adult, with the encouragement of her husband, Kevin, she bravely worked up the courage to open her laptop and start writing. Utilizing the quiet 5 am mornings before work and the kids to create fantasy worlds with magic, adventure, and a dash of romance.

After earning her undergraduate degree in natural science with a minor in geology and two master’s degrees in education, J.E. began writing her debut novel, A Trial of Fate (summer 2024), book one of the Valdor Series. Her debut novel won the Shelf Unbound Longlisted 2024 award, along with a special edition sold internationally by The Ink Pages.

When J.E. is not writing, she loves staying active and spending quality time with her two daughters and husband. When a free moment strikes, J.E. can be found hiking through the mountains or returning to her first love of playing volleyball.

J.E. lives in Alaska, sharing the love of her home state with her husband, two daughters, and their two labrador retrievers.

Website: jelarson.my.canva.site/author
Instagram: j.e.larson_author
Other: (TikTok) J.E.Larson

Rustin Lovewell

Rustin Lovewell grew up in northern Maine picking rocks out of potato fields (his very first job), driving his snowmobile to spring baseball practice (snow hangs on for a while up there), and reading every Stephen King novel in his local library (because… Maine).  As an adult he’s been moving slowly but steadily south, studying microbiology and immunology at Dartmouth College and then at UMass Medical School.  He’s currently made it halfway down the eastern seaboard, where he works as a researcher developing new treatments for cancer and inflammatory disease.

A life-long reader of fantasy, Rustin’s love of epic tales spurred a desire to write his own fantastical stories.  His speculative fiction has appeared in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores and the Volume 35 Writers of the Future anthology.  He is beyond excited to share his debut fantasy novel with the world.

Rustin can often be found in a Maryland coffee shop, where he’ll be tapping on his laptop and completely lost in his own head.  He resides near Washington D.C. with his wife, two young daughters, and mini-dachshund affectionately known as Lady Little Legs.

Facebook: Rustin Lovewell
Twitter: @rustinlovewell
Website: www.rustinlovewell.com

Pat McCaw

Pat McCaw traveled a winding path to the writing world. Her childhood love of storytelling was overruled by science, and she earned her MD at the University of Iowa. After practicing family medicine for fifteen years, she picked up a pen and wrote a middle-grade fantasy novel in two weeks. Her passion for writing resurfaced, and it changed her life.

With two kids and a busy medical practice, she went back to school and earned her MFA in Creative Writing for Children from Hamline University. She journeyed into fantastic worlds with her characters and didn’t want to leave. In a massive life change, she left her family practice after 20 years to focus on writing.

 Through Mighty Media Press, she published children’s books for Mayo Clinic Press. She combined her medical and writing worlds to create a six-book series Helping Paws Academy. In each book, therapy dogs teach hospitalized children about diabetes, seizures, broken bones, stitches, leukemia, and appendicitis. A second four-book series, Edge of Medicine, is expected in Spring 2025 and explores medical breakthroughs in surgery, neuroscience, cancer treatment, and nanomedicine.

Pat writes middle grade and young adult fiction, non-fiction and fiction picture books, as well as adult fiction. She lives in rural Iowa with her husband and two daughters. She’s faculty at a medical residency program teaching doctors-in-training and works urgent care part-time. Her family is
working their way through the National Parks and enjoying each hike along the way. She loves to fish, camp, hunt mushrooms, and explore hidden trails in the trees.

Twitter: @mccawpat
Website: https://patmccawauthor.com
Blog: https://patmccawauthor.com/patschat/
Instagram:  @patmccawauthor 

Brenda Miller

Brenda S. Miller writes middle grade and picture books. She grew up in New Mexico, a state that still has a strong pull on her considering she set her first middle grade novel there. In Iowa, she studied English and philosophy and in California, she honed her skills as a professional writer. She has written two full-length books of poetry—ABC* and At the Intersection of Scripture and Normal—and has had poems published in Mid-America Poetry Review and Phoebe, among others.

She is a 2023 Las Musas Hermana with Madrina Kim Baker and a previous mentee in the Latinx in Publishing program with mentor Christina Diaz Gonzalez. She is an active member of the #MGPies writing group and SCBWI and volunteers for WriteGirl. She currently works as a writer at the University of Southern California. One of her favorite things to do is to find typos in the wild. She lives in Los Angeles with her spouse, three book-loving kids, an adventurous cat, a huge dog, and two frogs.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/meowdemeow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meowdemeow/
Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/meowdemeow.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenda-miller-7977716/

Vera Raye

Vera Raye grew up surrounded by the legends and myths of her homeland, so being drawn to fantasy was almost unavoidable. She launched a new slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy series, The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows, where banter is a love language, danger loves to lurk in gilded throne rooms and ferocious wilderness alike, and complicated family dynamics threaten to start a Clan war. The first book in the series, A Crown of Tears and Treason, reached the Amazon #1 bestseller rank in its respective category.

When she’s not complicating her characters’ lives one plot twist at a time, Vera writes science and tech articles. She enjoys cooking, sewing her dream wardrobe, and being the most competitive player on game night. She loves to travel and always comes back with too many pictures and fresh ideas for her books.

Website: https://veraraye.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vera.raye/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vera.raye
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/verarayeauthor/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VeraRaye|
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Vera-Raye-Fantasy-Romance-Author/61560669712288/

Julie Shattuck

As a child growing up in Britain, Julie dreamt of writing stories and travelling the world. She wrote her first book in third grade during her brilliant teacher’s Wednesday afternoon “Free Writing” hours. This teacher also kick-started her love of words when he put “antidisestablishmentarianism” on his first spelling test.

After finishing university, Julie set off on her travels and taught English in Spain and South Korea, where she met her husband. As he is American, she decided it was a good idea for them to live in the same country, so she made the U.S. her home.

Currently, Julie resides in Maryland with her husband, their two daughters, and two rescue dogs.

Julie is a community college English professor with a passion for lifelong learning. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature, a Master of Arts in Linguistics for English Language Teaching, and a Doctorate in Distance Education.

When she is not writing middle grade books, Julie enjoys being on the water in a boat, canoe, or kayak. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and interacts with many wonderful writers in online critique groups.

Twitter: @JulieWritesMG

Michael Simon

Michael Simon lives in New Brunswick, on the Canadian East Coast, with his wife and family. To sustain a chronic writing addiction, he works as a family physician, where every day brings its own stories: he’s delivered babies, worked 48-hour emergency room shifts, stitched up professional hockey and rugby players, and even treated touring rock bands.

A lifelong reader of sci-fi and fantasy, Michael has published science fiction stories in a number of magazines including Apex: Science Fiction and Horror, Unfit, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Nonfiction articles have appeared in healthcare, sports and travel magazines.
He has found success in several contests including the “SLF Older Writers Grant’ and ‘Writers of the Future’. He is a contributor to the Mythaxis Review and to The Medical Post, where he is a member of the national magazine’s editorial board. Michael is also a seasoned radio columnist
with a successful Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) morning show.

Michael is excited to announce the release of two science fiction series in 2025. His First Command trilogy, from Aethon Books, will be available in February, and the first book of his Extinction series, from Podium Entertainment, will be released in April.

When not writing or practicing medicine, Michael can be found watching the latest Montreal Canadians game or streaming his favorite rugby team, the New Zealand All Blacks. Feel free to connect on his website or on any social media platform.

Twitter: @msimon_simon
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsimon15
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.simon.5245/
Website: https://www.michaelsimon.live/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelsimon1515/?hl=en

Emily Soderberg

Emily Soderberg has always loved reading and writing mysteries. Her first attempt was in second grade, when she filled a spiral notebook with a pretty blatant “Boxcar Children” rip-off. The project stalled, however, because poor seven-year-old Emily couldn’t figure out which of her dastardly suspects was guilty.

She was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and has spent her adult life in St. Louis. In college, she studied Religious Studies and German, which has come in handy exactly twice in her professional career. Once she was asked to write ad copy for a Bavarian prince’s winery, and once when trying to troubleshoot a giant machine. The parts diagram for the giant machine was inexplicably in German.

These days, she spends her free time up in the air, as a trapeze and aerial hoop coach. She might be tempted to run off and join the circus, but her cats prefer a more settled lifestyle. Emily used to be able to say that her cats were named after Power Rangers, but a recent addition has messed up the pattern. So now she can just say that her cats were named, which isn’t really worth saying.

Twitter:  @EmilyRSoderberg
Instagram:  soderbergemily
Website: Emilysoderberg-books.com 

Francisca Staines

Francisca was born and grew up in Mexico City but spent her summers in Chihuahua (northern Mexico) alongside her grandmother, who instilled in her a deep love for arid lands, storytelling and science. Loves that followed her to college. She became an oceanographer and worked for many years in Baja California, researching biodiversity. The people she met and the places she discovered in this fantastic peninsula inspired many a short story and still populate the books she writes today.

Later on, she attended graduate school in Los Angeles, California. After obtaining her doctorate, she became a modern-nomad, travelling the world, from Canada to France, from Denmark to Belgium, always searching for clues to reconstruct the history of the oceans.

Yet, her love for writing never dwindled and, by weaving memories and magic, she recreates reality in stories for children, eager to show them a side of her native country that rarely makes it into the news.

At present, she lives in a small town south of Brussels, sharing her days with her lovely husband and two hyperactive dogs.

Twitter: @stabofr
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@franciscawrites
Bluesky: @franciscawrites.bsky.social

Alissa Stallings

Alissa Stallings is a writer of art historical mysteries that highlight the historical lack of representation of women artists in western art. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She worked as an art and valuables expert for an insurance company, and a food critic for the Mountain View Voice before becoming a Senior Communications Director for a graduate university. Alissa is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and The Authors Guild. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Instagram: @astallingsauthor
Website: www.alissastallings.com

Mindy Wendell

Mindy Nichols Wendell comes from a long line of teachers and storytellers. She learned to read at an early age and has never stopped. Beginning in fourth grade, Mindy failed every eye test she took for the next six years. The ophthalmologist advised her to stop reading so much. Luckily, Mindy’s parents disagreed and just kept buying her new glasses.

For more than thirty years, Mindy taught courses in literature and writing to thousands of students, many of whom now have classrooms of their own. Mindy is a strong advocate for children and believes everything teachers do in the classroom should help kids become joyful, active, lifelong readers and writers. In 2019, Mindy received the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Mindy retired from teaching in 2021 and is now a full-time writer. She lives in Western New York with her husband, Steve, a retired elementary school teacher. She has six grown kids and kids-in-law and five adorable grandchildren.

LIGHT AND AIR (Holiday House)is the story of ten-year-old Hallelujah Newton and her search for hope and healing in a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1935. LIGHT AND AIR is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

CALIFORNIA OR DUST (Holiday House) is the story of eleven-year-old Meadowlark Jensen whose family has fled the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in hopes of finding a better life in California. Unfortunately, the reception they receive when they arrive is less than sunny. In fact, it’s downright hostile. CALIFORNIA OR DUST is scheduled for publication by Holiday House in the spring of 2026.

Bluesky: @mnwendell.bsky.social
Website: https://mindynicholswendell.com

Victoria Zeolla

Victoria Zeolla is a YA author and writing coach who believes in the power of story. From discovering who we are in a coming-of-age novel, learning about love and heartache in a romance, or escaping through the pages of epic fantasy, Victoria knows the world needs good books. As a writing coach, Victoria has the immense pleasure of helping other writers finish and refine their stories.

Victoria’s work has been featured in publications such as Bright Flash Literary Review and Anti-Heroin Chic. She can often be found talking to herself, watching Good Will Hunting for the 200th time, or daydreaming of owning a Mustang. She was born and raised in the wonderful city of Pittsburgh, PA, where she still lives with her techy husband and their two spunky kids.

Twitter: twitter.com/VictoriaZeolla
Instagram: instagram.com/victoria_zeolla