Stefan Bachmann
Stefan Bachmann was born in Colorado and stayed there for about five minutes until his parents decided they'd rather live in Switzerland. They moved into a creaky old house outside of Zurich, and he's been there ever since. He is a student of organ and composition at the Zurich Conservatory, and the winner of a bevy of classical music prizes few people have ever heard of. His debut, gothic-steampunk-faery-fantasy The Peculiar, will be published late 2012 by Greenwillow/HarperCollins.

http://scathingjellyfish.blogspot.com

Kristen Callihan
Kristen Callihan is a child of the 80's, which means she's worn neon skirts, black-lace gloves, and combat boots (although never all at once) and can quote John Hughes movies with the best of them. A life long daydreamer, she finally realized that the characters in her head needed a proper home and thus hit the keyboard. She believes that falling in love is one of the headiest experiences a person can have, so naturally she writes romance. Her love of superheroes, action movies, and history led her to writing historical paranormals. She lives in the Washington D.C. area and, when not writing, looks after two children, one husband, and a dog -the fish can fend for themselves.

www.http://kristencallihan.com

Gail Carriger
New York Times Bestselling author Gail Carriger writes to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. Ms. Carriger then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She resides in the Colonies, surrounded by fantastic shoes, where she insists on tea imported from London. The Parasol Protectorate books are: Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, Heartless, and Timeless (March 2012). Soulless won the ALA's Alex Award. A manga version will release in March 2012. She is currently writing young adult books set in the same universe - the Finishing School series (Feb. 2013). Soon she will begin a new adult series, The Parasol Protectorate Abroad (Fall 2013).

www.gailcarriger.com

Ally Carter
Ally Carter writes books about spies, thieves, and teenagers. She is the New York Times Bestselling author of Heist Society and the popular Gallagher Girls series (I'd Tell You I Love You but Then I'd Have to Kill You, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover, and Only the Good Spy Young). She lives in Oklahoma where her life is either very ordinary or the best deep-cover legend ever. She'd tell you more, but...well...you know...

www.allycarter.com

Sara Creasy
Sara Creasy grew up in a tumbling-down Victorian house in England, where she tapped out her first stories on a tiny blue typewriter. After moving to southeastern Australia as a teenager, her love of all things fantastical hooked her on science fiction. Meanwhile, in real life, a biology degree led to work as an editor in the educational publishing industry. She was associate editor of Australia’s science fiction and fantasy magazine Aurealis for several years, and her involvement with the SF community inspired her to write her first novel. Marriage to an American resulted in a second intercontinental move, and she lived in Arizona for five years before returning to Australia with her husband and baby daughter in 2010. She now lives in Melbourne.

www.saracreasy.com

Jana DeLeon
Jana DeLeon was raised in southwest Louisiana among the bayous and the gators. Currently she resides in Dallas, Texas with three spoiled cats, three spoiled dogs and one spoiled husband. She is the VP of Finance for a privately held corporation.

www.janadeleon.com

Lucienne Diver
Lucienne Diver is a long-time book addict who went to work for Spectrum Literary Agency fifteen years ago to feed her habit. Recently, she traded in her high-rise for a lake view and now lives in Florida, where she works for The Knight Agency. Through various play-dates and in various coffee bars, on the backs of envelopes, carry-out bags and anything else within reach, including, sometimes, her checkbook, she's penned the serio-comic tale of what happens when a young fashionista goes from chic to eek.

www.luciennediver.com

Simone Elkeles
Simone Elkeles was a teen in the 80’s and still uses words like "grody" and "totally," but resists the urge to wear blue eye shadow. Simone is the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Attraction and Return to Paradise. Her award-winning book How to Ruin a Summer Vacation placed #3 on the Teens’ Top Ten list by YALSA, a division of the American Library Association. Her novel Leaving Paradise was a Book Sense pick and How to Ruin my Teenage Life is an AJL Notable Book for Teen Readers. Simone has a B.S. in Industrial Psychology from the University of Illinois and has a master’s degree in Industrial Relations from Loyola University-Chicago. She lives in the Midwest and loves spending her days writing books for teens.

www.simoneelkeles.net

Jamie Ford
Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name "Ford," thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was a New York Times bestseller, an IndieBound NEXT List Selection, a Borders Original Voices Selection, a Barnes & Noble Book Club Selection, PennieÕs Pick at Costco, and a Target Book Club Pick. Hotel was also named the #1 Book Club Pick for Fall 2009/Winter 2010 by the American Booksellers Association, and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 29 languages. Jamie is still holding out for Klingon (that's when you know you've made it).

Janice Hardy
A long-time fantasy reader, Janice Hardy always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy THE HEALING WARS, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her books include THE SHIFTER, and BLUE FIRE. She lives in Georgia with her husband, three cats and one very nervous freshwater eel. You can visit her online at her website or chat with her about writing on her blog, The Other Side of the Story.

www.janicehardy.com

Jason Hough
In the summer of '85, when Jason was thirteen, two things happened. First, he inherited a box of old comic books. Second, he spent his summer co-writing a novel about murder in British-occupied India. You know, kid stuff. Both would spark life-long passions. The comic books in reading and all-things-geek. The novel, awkward and goofy as it was, sparked a latent and festering urge to write. After a career designing video games, Jason finally decided to take his writing seriously in 2007. He hammered out a few practice novels and screenplays before tackling an ambitious sci-fi epic. So far, so good! He currently lives in San Diego with his wife and two sons.

www.jasonhough.com

Carolyn Jewel
Carolyn Jewel has been writing stories ever since she could scribble. Now that she's grown up (mostly) she writes historical and paranormal romance because she loves history and imagining the lives of people who lived in years past, and because she's fascinated by the loves and travails of the not-exactly-human in any time period. Carolyn lives in Northern California with her son, three cats, a border collie, several chickens, some sheep and various strays and other rescued critters. Ms. Jewel is also a Microsoft SQL Server Database Administrator who specializes in, uhm, administering MS SQL Server databases. It's not nearly as exciting as writing.

www.carolynjewel.com

Miranda Kenneally
Miranda Kenneally grew up in Manchester, Tennessee, a quaint little town where nothing cool ever happened until after she left. Now Manchester is the home of Bonnaroo.  Growing up, Miranda wanted to become an author, a Major League Baseball player, a country music singer, or an interpreter for the United Nations. Instead she became an author who works for the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., planning major events and doing special projects, and once acted as George W. Bush's armrest during a meeting. She has a degree in International Relations from American University, where she also minored in Creative Writing and Literature. She enjoys reading and writing young adult literature, and loves Star Trek, music, sports, Mexican food, Twitter, coffee, and her husband.

www.mirandakenneally.com

Jane Kindred
Jane Kindred began writing romantic fantasy novellas at the age of 12 in the wayback of a Plymouth Fury-which, as far as she recalls, never killed anyone who didn't have it coming. Born in Billings, Montana, she was soon whisked away to Tucson, Arizona where she spent most of her childhood ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the sun (and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark). Although she was repeatedly urged to learn a marketable skill in case she couldn't find a man to marry her, she received a B.A. in Creative Writing anyway from the University of Arizona. She now lives in San Francisco with her son and her partner, two feline overlords who are convinced she is constantly plotting their death, and a cockatiel named Imhotep who punishes her for sins in a past life (and whom she frequently imagines tastily smoked, dried, and splayed on a stick like omul fished from Lake Baikal).

http://www.janekindred.com/

Roni Loren
Roni wrote her first romance novel at age fifteen when she discovered writing about boys was way easier than actually talking to them. Since then, her flirting skills haven't improved, but she likes to think her storytelling ability has. After earning a master's degree in social work from LSU, she worked in a mental hospital, counseled birthmothers as an adoption coordinator, and did management recruiting in her PJs. But she always returned to writing. Though she'll forever be a New Orleans girl at heart, she now lives in Dallas with her husband and son. If she's not working on her latest sexy story, you can find her reading, watching reality television, or indulging in her unhealthy addiction to rockstars, er, rock concerts--yeah, that's it.

http://www.roniloren.com/

Marie Lu
Marie writes young adult novels and has a special love for dystopian books. Ironically, she was born in 1984. During the day, she is an Art Director at a video game company and enjoys discussing Facebook game apps with her co-workers, hearing amusing insider stories about World of Warcraft bugs, and delighting in cute 3D renditions of buildings--all via Skype. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she spends much of her time lost on the freeways.

http://marielu.org

Ashlyn Macnamara
They say that once you reach your forties, you undergo some sort of mid-life crisis. That must have been what happened to Ashlyn Macnamara when she finally made up her mind to set down some of the stories that had been accumulating dust in the dark recesses of her brain for years. As space becomes available, other plots and characters have developed the pesky habit of moving in to take their place. Ashlyn lives in the wilds of suburbia outside Montreal with her husband and two teenaged daughters. When not writing, she looks for other excuses to neglect the housework, among them knitting, reading and wasting time on the internet in the guise of doing research.

http://ashlynmacnamara.net/

Marianne Mancusi
Marianne Mancusi is a multiple Emmy award-winning television producer and author of novels for adults and teens. She’s worked at television stations in Boston, San Diego, and Orlando and is a graduate of Boston University’s College of Communications. She recently left the local TV news world to become a segment producer for the nationally syndicated women’s lifestyle show, Better TV. When not writing or producing, she enjoys snowboarding, clubbing, 80s music, cosplay, and her favorite guilty pleasure—the World of Warcraft videogame.

www.mariannemancusi.com

Maggie Marr
Maggie Marr began her career as an attorney in Chicago. She was a guardian-ad-litem for abused and neglected children in Cook County. She then became a prosecutor representing victims of domestic violence. Upon moving to Los Angeles, Maggie began her entertainment career in the mailroom at ICM. Promoted within two years, Maggie worked as a motion picture literary agent representing screenwriters and directors. It was while agenting for ICM that Maggie wrote The Hollywood Girls Club. After a bidding war, in a two-book deal, Random House purchased Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club. Once Maggie began work on her second book she hung up her suits and became a full time writer. She co-wrote The Apology Expert a romantic comedy which is in development with the director Nick Hurran. For television Maggie wrote Hart & Stone and Sexology. She is currently at work on a new book. Maggie is also the VP of Programming for the online Women's Fiction Chapter of RWA. She is married and has two children.

http://www.maggiemarr.com/

Courtney Milan
Courtney Milan lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, a well-trained dog, and an attack cat. Courtney wishes she could say she has lived in numerous fabulous places. But aside from her husband, there is a distinct lack of fabulousness in her life. Instead, she is happy when standards in the Milan household hover above mediocrity. Her husband attempts not to kill people for a living. In exchange, Courtney attempts not to do the dishes. Before she started writing historical romance, Courtney experimented with various occupations: computer programming, dog-training, scientificating…. Having given up on being able to do any of those things, she's taken to heart the axiom that those who can't do, teach. When she's not reading (lots), writing (lots), or sleeping (not enough), she can be found in the vicinity of a classroom.

Micheal Planck
After a nearly-transient childhood, Micheal hitchhiked across the country and ran out of money in Arizona. So he stayed there for thirty years, raising dogs, getting a degree in Philosophy, and founding a scientific instrument company. Having read virtually everything by the old Masters of SF&F, he decided he was ready to write. A decade later, with a little help from the Critters online critique group, he was actually ready. He was relieved to find that writing novels is easier than writing software, as a single punctuation error won't cause your audience to explode and die. When he ran out of dogs, he moved to Australia to raise his daughter with her cousins. Now he is a father, author, and immigrant. Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts to some American lives, even if they start in other countries.

Paula Reed
Paula Reed is an English teacher at Columbine High School of Littleton, Colorado. After surviving the tragic shooting there, she, not unlike many students and teachers who were there that day, decided the time to pursue all of one's true passions is now. Paula's passions are teaching and writing.

www.paula-reed.com

Sarah Rees Brennan
Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it's not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. After living briefly in New York and doing a Creative Writing MA and library work in Surrey, England, she has returned to Ireland to write. Her Irish is still woeful, but she feels the books under the desk were worth it.

www.sarahreesbrennan.com

Kimberly Reid
Kimberly Reid is the author of the Langdon Prep mystery series for young adults starring Chanti Evans, a fifteen-year-old girl trying to navigate her new school and solve crimes on the side. Like her main character, Kimberly grew up the daughter of a police detective, attended a prep school where she did not fit in, and always wanted to help her mother solve crimes. She earned a M.A. from The George Washington University and currently lives near Denver, Colorado, where her series is set.

www.kimberlyreid.com

Tiffany Reisz
Tiffany Reisz lives in Lexington, Kentucky with two roommates, two dogs, two cats, and one hedgehog which doesn’t belong to anyone who lives in the house and no one is actually sure how he got there. She graduated with a B.A. in English from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and is making both her parents and her professors proud by writing erotica under her real name. She has five piercings, one tattoo, and has been arrested twice. When not under arrest, Tiffany enjoys Latin Dance, Latin Men, and Latin Verbs. She dropped out of a conservative southern seminary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a smut peddler. Johnny Depp’s aunt was her fourth grade teacher. There is little to nothing interesting about her. If she couldn’t write, she would die.

www.tiffanyreisz.com

Kristina Riggle
Kristina Riggle is a former newspaper reporter and one-time holiday temp bookseller, and the short fiction co-editor for the e-zine Literary Mama. ÊHer debut, Real Life & Liars, was a Target Breakout pick and a Great Lakes, Great Reads selection by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. Her other novels have been recognized by independent booksellers as an IndieNext Notable book as well as a Midwest Connections pick. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in journalism. Her newspaper career included flying in a stunt plane, asking President Gerald Ford a question at a press conference, getting seasick on a Coast Guard boat and covering 6,000 local government meetings, give or take. She lives in West Michigan with her husband, two kids, and dog, where she enjoys reading, yoga, and dabbling in (very) amateur musical theater.

www.kristinariggle.net

Allison Rushby
Having failed at becoming a ballerina with pierced ears (her childhood dream), Allison Rushby instead began a writing career as a journalism student at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Within a few months she had slunk sideways into studying Russian. By the end of her degree she had learned two very important things: that she wasn't going to be a journalist; and that there are hundreds of types of vodka and they're all pretty good.  After several years spent whining about how hard it would be to write a novel, she finally tried writing one and found it was quite an enjoyable experience. Since then, she has had nine novels published. She keeps up her education by sampling new kinds of vodka on a regular basis.

www.allisonrushby.com

Lisa Shearin
Lisa currently works as the editor at an advertising agency. She has been a magazine editor and writer of corporate marketing materials of every description. Lisa enjoys singing, reading, writing novels, and fencing (foil and epee, as well as rapier & dagger dueling). She lives in North Carolina with her husband, one cat, two spoiled-rotten retired racing greyhounds, and a Jack Russell Terrier who rules them all.

www.lisashearin.com

Linnea Sinclair
A former news reporter and retired private detective, Linnea Sinclair has managed to use all her college degrees (journalism and criminology) but hasn't soothed the yearning in her soul to travel the galaxy. To that end, she has authored several science fiction romance novels, including Finders Keepers (RITA-Award finalist) and Gabriel's Ghost (RITA-Award winner), and An Accidental Goddess. Her 2007-2008 releases include The Down Home Zombie Blues and Shades of Dark. When not on duty with some intergalactic fleet, she can be found in Naples, Florida with her golf-loving husband, Robert Bernadino, and their two thoroughly spoiled cats, Daiquiri and Miss Doozy.

www.linneasinclair.com

Sarah Skilton
After growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduating with a TV/Radio degree from Ithaca College in upstate New York, Sarah moved to sunny Los Angeles, where her blood promptly thinned out, preventing her from returning to either location. Kicking around Hollywood for ten years, Sarah worked as a movie-of-the-week production assistant, a TV extra, a freelance writer, a film reviewer, and a blogger at a Japanese marketing group. She currently reads TV and film scripts for a company that streamlines the casting process for agents and actors. She and her husband, a magician, live in Santa Clarita, CA. She's never been sawed in half, but there's still time. Sarah is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a fact that came in handy while writing her martial arts-themed debut YA novel, BRUISED.

www.sarahskilton.com

Shanna Swendson
Shanna currently works as a freelance writer doing marketing and publicity materials for various local and international companies while devoting the bulk of her time to writing novels. In addition to reading and writing, Shanna enjoys doing in-depth analyses of television science fiction series, cooking and singing. She is single and lives in Irving, Texas, with her many pet plants, including a vicious attack bougainvillea and a Christmas cactus that has outlasted three homes, three jobs and three boyfriends, yet still faithfully blooms every Christmas and Easter.

www.shannaswendson.com

Brooke Taylor
Brooke Taylor writes Young Adult fiction from her home in the Oklahoma. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys horseback riding, going to the lake, and traveling. Her many overseas adventures include sky diving in New Zealand, scuba diving with sharks, sailing through hurricanes, and having her tent attacked by wild animals in the Mara game reserve in Africa. Due to parental concerns and current health insurance rates, Brooke has agreed to let her characters do most of the risk-taking from now on.

www.BrookeTaylorBooks.com

Sherry Thomas
Sherry Thomas burst onto the scene with Private Arrangements, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008. Her sophomore book, Delicious, is a Library Journal Best Romance of 2008. Her next two books, Not Quite A Husband and His At Night, are back-to-back winners of Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA Award for Best Historical Romance in 2010 and 2011. Lisa Kleypas calls her "the most powerfully original historical romance author working today." Her story is all the more interesting given that English is Sherry's second language-she has come a long way from the days when she made her laborious way through Rosemary Roger's Sweet Savage Love with an English-Chinese dictionary. She enjoys digging down to the emotional core of stories. And when she is not writing, she thinks about the zen and zaniness of her profession, plays computer games with her sons, and reads as many fabulous books as she can find.

www.sherrythomas.com

Monica Trasandes
Monica Trasandes was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. Her family relocated to the U.S. in the early 70s during the military upheaval there. She earned her B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but spent a year at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where part of her novel is set. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and has worked as a newspaper reporter and a magazine editor. She is now the Director of Spanish-Language Media at GLAAD. Her short stories have been been anthologized and published in journals and magazines such as The Sun and The Rake. Her play, Fernando Richardson's Treacherous Brain, was produced and performed at the Open Fist Theatre in Los Angeles in 2011 and garnered very good reviews. Monica currently lives in Los Angeles with her partner Valda and enjoys seeing her family, swimming and getting to the beach as much as possible for some boogie boarding and smash ball.

www.monicatrasandes.com

Jennifer Shaw Wolf
Jennifer Shaw Wolf grew up on a farm in the little town of St. Anthony, Idaho. She spent cold Idaho mornings milking cows in the dark and attended a school where Hunter’s Education was part of the sixth grade curriculum and school was let out for spud (potato) harvest.  While attending Ricks College, she met the love of her life after he dropped her on her head. She graduated from Ricks with a husband and Brigham Young University, Provo with a degree in Broadcast Communications and a son. Now she lives in beautiful, green, (rainy) Lacey, Washington with her husband and four kids. She loves to produce videos, ski, ride horses, and read, but really all she has time for is chasing kids and writing.

www.jennifershawwolf.com