fiction, Lee is a Lifetime Active member of SFWA (where she is serving her second term on the Board of Directors), a member of the SCA, a fencing member of the SFWA Musketeers, and a Named Bard. She and her husband live in Plano, Texas, where she keeps friends and fans in the loop at http://www.HarpHaven.net.
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Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with one of the above and her husband, author and packager, Bill Fawcett. She has written over forty books, including The Ship Who Won with Anne McCaffrey; eight books with Robert Asprin; a humorous anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!; and more than 115 short stories. Her latest books are Fortunes of the Imperium (Baen Books) and Dragons Run (Ace Books).
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Steven Harper Piziks was born with a name that no one can reliably spell or pronounce, so he usually writes under the pen name Steven Harper. He sold a short story on his first try way back in 1990. Since then, he’s written twenty-plus novels, including The Clockwork Empire steampunk series. Currently, he’s writing The Books of Blood and Iron, a fantasy trilogy. Iron Axe, the first one, came out in January, 2015. For this anthology, he resurrected Dagmar and Ramdane, his brother-and-sister team from Turn the Other Chick, so he could say good-bye to them. The story is dedicated—and why not?—to Esther’s cat, Lulu, and her fondness for turkey. Steven also teaches English in southeast Michigan. When not writing, he plays the folk harp, wrestles with his sons, and embarrasses them in public. Visit his web page at http://www.stevenpiziks.com
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When Jean Rabe isn’t tossing tennis balls to her moose-of-a-mutt or sharing a lawn chair with her pug, she writes and edits. She’s the author of thirty fantasy, SF, and adventure novels, and boatloads of short stories. She’s edited a couple dozen anthologies and more magazine issues than she cares to count. She lives in a tiny town in Illinois surrounded by railroad tracks. Visit her at www.jeanrabe.com.
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Laura Resnick is the author of the popular Esther Diamond urban fantasy series, whose releases include Disappearing Nightly, Doppelgangster, Unsympathetic Magic, Vamparazzi, Polterheist, The Misfortune Cookie, and Abracadaver. She has also written traditional fantasy novels such as In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made multiple “Year’s Best” lists. An opinion columnist, frequent public speaker, and the Campbell Award-winning author of many short stories, she is on the web at www.LauraResnick.com.
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Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s novels have hit bestseller lists worldwide, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times (London). She’s won or been nominated for every major award in the science fiction and fantasy field. She’s an award-winning editor as well, currently with Fiction River. 2015 marks an experiment she’s conducting with WMG Publishing: every month, from January on, she’s publishing a brand new novel in her Retrieval Artist series. The novels complete a story arc that began with the novel, Anniversary Day. To her knowledge, no one else in SF has ever done such a thing. When she completes that, she will return her attention to her worldwide bestselling fantasy series, The Fey. For more information on her work, go to www.kristinekathrynrusch.com
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Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the author of 39 novels, including the 1989 Nebula Award-winning Healer’s War and sixteen in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey. Best known for her versatility in subject matter and humorous writing style, Scarborough is also a former army nurse and served in Vietnam. She never had to wear armor, however, just a flak jacket and helmet when her hospital unit was under fire. She is currently working on The Dragon, The Witch and The Railroad, a spinoff of her popular Songs from the Seashell Archives series.
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Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, New York. Over 60 of his short stories have appeared in Nature, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other venues. He edits Unidentified Funny Objects, an annual anthology of humorous SF/F. His fiction is linked at www.alexshvartsman.com
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USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith has published over a hundred novels in thirty years and hundreds and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of a dozen films from The Final Fantasy to Steel to The Rundown. He now writes his own original fiction under just one name, Dean Wesley Smith. His new thriller Dead Money, came out in November 2013, and since January 2014 he has published ten original novels in science fiction and mystery. His new monthly magazine Smith’s Monthly, premiered on October 1, 2013, and contain an original novel in every issue, and at least four short stories plus articles and serial stories. Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now the executive editor for Fiction River.
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John W. Campbell Award Winner, Wen Spencer resides in paradise in Hilo, Hawaii, with two volcanoes overlooking her home. Spencer says that she often wakes up and exclaims, “Oh my god, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific!” According to Spencer, she lives with “my Dali Llama-like husband, my autistic teenage son, and two cats (one of which is recovering from mental illness). All of which makes for very odd home life at times.” Spencer’s love of Japanese anime and manga flavors her writing. “Dark Pixii” features the characters from her most recent novel, Eight Million Gods.
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Born on an Indian reservation in northern California, Louisa Swann spent the first six months of her life in a papoose carrier. Determined not to remain a basket case forever, she escaped the splintered confines, finally settling down on a ranch where she spins tales that range from light to dark and back again. Louisa’s writerly eccentricities have resulted in numerous short story publications in various anthologies. Find out more at www.louisaswann.com.
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Harry Turtledove is an escaped Byzantine historian who writes alternate history, other science fiction, fantasy, and (when he can get away with it) historical fiction. Recent and upcoming books include Joe Steele and The House of Daniel. He is married to fellow writer, Laura Frankos, who also perpetrated a story for this book. They have three daughters, one granddaughter, and the required writer’s cat.
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Elizabeth A. Vaughan is a USA Today bestselling author who writes fantasy romance. Her first novel, Warprize, was re-released in April 2011. You can learn more about her books at www.eavwrites.com. Beth has dedicated this story to Robert Wenzlaff, friend and fellow author, whose own story ended far too soon.
About Esther Friesner
Nebula Award winner, Esther M. Friesner is the author of more than forty novels and nearly 200 short stories. She created and edited the first Chicks in Chainmail anthology, published in 1995, which is one heck of a way to use a Vassar College B.A. and an M.A./Ph.D. from Yale University! She is also the author of the popular Princesses of Myth series, the most recent titles being Deception’s Princess and Deception’s Pawn. When not writing about young women with that certain Can-Do/Can’t-Stop-Me attitude, she’s found in Connecticut, attended by her delightful family and epic cat.
About John Helfers
John Helfers is a full-time freelance writer and editor, and is the president of Stonehenge Art & Word, an editorial/literary management company. He shares a long history with the Chicks series of anthologies, having assisted on the previous four volumes during his sixteen years at Tekno Books under Martin H. Greenberg. On his writing side, he’s published more than fifty short stories in anthologies such as Fiction River: Risk Takers (WMG Publishing), Schemers (Stone Skin Press), and Shattered Shields (Baen Books). His media tie-in fiction has appeared in anthologies, game books, and novels for the Dragonlance®, Transformers®, BattleTech®, Shadowrun®, Warlock II® and Golem Arcana® universes. He’s also written fiction and nonfiction, including a novel in the first authorized trilogy based on The Twilight Zone™ television series, the young adult novel Tom Clancy’s Net Force Explorers™: Cloak and Dagger, the original fantasy novel Siege of Night and Fire, and a history of the United States Navy.