Featuring stories told to you live by:
Aaron Besson – Aaron is a writer of horror and weird fiction currently residing in Seattle, WA with a lovely woman and three horrible cats. His other interests include reading a lot and dark ambient music.
Jennifer Brody – Jennifer Brody is the award-winning author of ten books, including The 13th Continuum trilogy, the DISNEY CHILLS book series featuring Disney villains haunting kids, and the graphic novels Spectre Deep 6and 200 with Eisner-winning artist and syndicated cartoonist Jules Rivera, prompting Forbes to call Brody “a star in the graphic novel world.”
She’s a graduate of Harvard University, a film and TV producer and writer, and a creative writing instructor. She began her career in Hollywood at Platinume Dunes and New Line Cinema, working on many films, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Golden Compass. She lives and writes in Malibu by the beach.
Laura Lee Bahr – Laura Lee Bahr is a multi-award winning writer, performer and director. She is the author of two novels Haunt (winner of the Wonderland Book Award), translated into Spanish under the title Fantasma (Orciny Press, which has been nominated for two ‘best translated novel’, the Kelvin award and the Ignotus award) and her recent book (released April, 2016) Long-Form Religious Porn. Laura also has been a screenwriter for various award-winning films. This year Laura’s debut feature as writer/director, Boned, won “Best Micro-Budget Feature” at the Toronto Independent Film Festival and is currently distributed through Gravitas (available everywhere). Her latest book, a collection called Angel Meat, will be published in 2017 by Fungasm Press.
You can follow her on social media and at www.lauraleebahr.com
Robert Payne Cabeen –Robert Payne Cabeen is a screenwriter, artist, purveyor of narrative horror poetry, and now a novelist, with his Bram Stoker Award winning debut Cold Cuts, from Omnium Gatherum. His screenwriting credits include Heavy Metal 2000, for Columbia TriStar, Sony Pictures, A Monkey’s Tale, and Walking with Buddha. Cabeen’s illustrated book, FEARWORMS: Selected Poems, was a 2015 Bram Stoker Award nominee.
As creative director for Streamline Pictures, Robert helped anime pioneer Carl Macek bring Japanese animated features, like Akira and dozens of other classics, to a western audience.
Cabeen received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Otis Art Institute, with a dual major in painting and design. Since then, he has combined his interests in the visual arts with screenwriting and storytelling for a broad range of entertainment companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia/TriStar, Disney, Sony, Universal, USA Network, Nelvana, and SEGA.
For more about Robert Payne Cabeen, visit: robertpaynecabeen.com.
Ashley Dioses – Ashley Dioses is a writer of dark fiction and poetry from southern California. Her debut collection of dark traditional poetry, Diary of a Sorceress, was released in 2017 from Hippocampus Press. Her second poetry collection of supernatural horror, The Withering, is due out this December from Jackanapes Press. Her poetry has appeared in Weird Fiction Review, Cemetery Dance Publications, Weirdbook, Black Wings VI: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and others. Her poem “Cobwebs,” was mentioned in Ellen Datlow’s recommended Best Horror of the Year Volume Twelve list. She has also appeared in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase 2016 and 2020 for her poems “Ghoul Mistress” and “Her Heart that Flames Would Not Devour” respectively. She was also a nominee for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. She is an Active member in the HWA and a member of the SFPA. She blogs at fiendlover.blogspot.com.
Michael Paul Gonzalez – Michael Paul Gonzalez lives and writes in Los Angeles. He’s the editor at ThunderDome Press, an occasional publisher of books which is currently closed for submissions. He has two novels available for purchase, and short stories all over the place!
C.B. Lee – CB Lee is a Lambda Literary Award nominated writer of young adult science fiction and fantasy. Her works include the Sidekick Squad series (Duet Books), Ben 10 (Boom!), and All Out Now (HarperTeen). CB loves to write about queer teens, magic, superheroes, and the power of friendship.
Lee’s work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Wired Magazine, and Hypable. Lee’s first novel in the Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Sidekick was a 2017 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist in YA/Children’s Fiction and a 2017 Bisexual Book Awards Finalist in Speculative Fiction. Seven Tears at High Tide was the recipient of a Rainbow Award for Best Bisexual Fantasy Romance and also a finalist for the 2016 Bisexual Book Awards in the YA and Speculative Fiction categories.
Leslie Parry – Leslie Parry is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in VQR, The Missouri Review, The Cincinnati Review, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Church of Marvels is her first novel. She currently lives in Chicago.
His non-fiction has appeared in FANGORIA and DARK DISCOVERIES, where he’s interviewed folks like Robert Englund, director Rob Hall, and Corey Taylor from Slipknot.
Currently, DUST OF THE DEAD, his first book from Samhain Publishing, arrived in June 2015 with GHOST HEART on February 14, 2016, with NIGHT OF 1,000 BEASTS to come in the very near future.
His work has been cited by the Bram Stoker Award® four times.
Lucio Rodriguez – Lucio Rodriguez once punched a man so hard he died; Lucio has very fragile hands. Don’t worry, he got better.
He has worked as an Entomologist for the past decade at UC Riverside, rearing fleas, cockroaches and moths for all your science needs, and doing other science-y stuff.
Lucio received an MFA in creative writing from UCR’s Palm Desert campus; he has stories in 18 Wheels of Science Fiction and CEA Greatest Anthology Written. He lives in Riverside, CA with his wife and two daughters, as well as two of his multiverse refugee selves. Before you go thinking this lets him get more work done, rest assured, it’s mostly just fighting over the bathroom.
Nicole Sconiers –Nicole D. Sconiers is the author of Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage, a speculative fiction short-story collection that has been taught at colleges and universities around the country.
Her short story “Kim” was published in Sycorax’s Daughters, a black woman’s horror anthology that was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.
Ms. Sconiers was a guest columnist for Nightmare magazine’s The H-Word. Her short story “The Eye of Heaven” appeared in the anthology Black from the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing, published by BLF Press. The anthology received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
Ms. Sconiers currently resides in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where she is working on a collection of horror stories
Adrian J. Smith – Adrian J. Smith has been publishing since 2013 but has been writing nearly her entire life. With a focus on women loving women fiction, AJ jumps genres from action-packed police procedurals to the seedier life of vampires and witches to sweet romances with a May-December twist. She loves writing and reading about women in the midst of the ordinariness of life. Two of her novels, For by Grace and Memoir in the Making, received honorable mentions with the Rainbow Awards.
AJ currently lives in Cheyenne, WY, although she moves often and has lived all over the United States. She loves to travel to different countries and places. She currently plays the roles of author, wife, and mother to two rambunctious toddlers, occasional handy-woman. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, or her blog.
Jeff Sweat – Jeff Sweat has made a living from words his entire career, starting out as an award-winning tech journalist for InformationWeek magazine and moving into marketing.
He led the content marketing team for Yahoo and pioneered its use of social media. He directed PR for two of the top advertising agencies in the country, Deutsch LA and 72andSunny. He now runs his own Los Angeles–based PR and strategy consultancy, Sweat + Co, and hosts the weekly live webinar series, Agencies Under Quarantine.
He loves to travel and writes everywhere he goes, even when there’s not a desk. He likes karaoke, motorcycles and carpentry. He was once shot in the head with a nail gun, which was not a big of a deal as it sounds. But it still hurt like crazy.
Cody Goodfellow has written eight novels, and co-wrote three more with New York Times bestselling author John Skipp. His first two collections, Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action, each received the Wonderland Book Award. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene films Stay At Home Dad and Baby Got Bass, which may be viewed on YouTube. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous short films, TV shows, music videos and commercials. He is also a cofounder of Perilous Press, an occasional micropublisher of modern cosmic horror. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and likes it a lot.
Maria Alexander is a produced screenwriter, games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, prolific fiction writer, and poet. Since 1999, her stories have appeared in acclaimed publications and anthologies. Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her breakout YA novel, Snowed, was unleashed on November 2, 2016, by Raw Dog Screaming Press. It won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel and was nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Children’s/YA Novel. When she’s not stabbing someone with a foil or cutting targets with a katana, she’s being outrageously spooky or writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats, a Jewish Christmas caroler, and a purse called Trog.
Wesley Chu’s best friend is Michael Jordan, assuming that best friend status is earned by a shared television commercial. If not, then his best friend is his dog Eva who he can often be seen riding like a trusty steed through the windy streets of Chicago. Unfortunately, Chu’s goals of using Hanes underwear commercials to launch a lucrative career following in Marky Mark’s footsteps came to naught. Despite phenomenal hair and manicured eyebrows, his inability to turn left led his destiny down another road. Instead of creating new realities with his skills as a thespian, Chu would dazzle audiences with his pen. Well, it’s a computer really, but the whole technology thing really sucks for metaphors. He had spirit fingers maybe? In 2015, Wesley Chu won the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. Chu’s debut novel from Angry Robot Books, The Lives of Tao, earned him a Young Adult Library Services Association Alex Award and a Science Fiction Goodreads Choice Award Finalist slot. His latest series, The Rise of Io, published by Angry Robot Books, features a con-woman with an alien cohabitation problem. He is currently co-writing a Magnus Bane book titled The Red Scrolls of Magic with Cassandra Clare. Wesley lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Paula, his son, Hunter, and Eva the Airedale Terrier.
Christa Faust grew up in New York City, in the Bronx and Hell’s Kitchen. She’s been making stuff up her whole life, and spent most of her teen years on endless subway rides, cutting school and scribbling stories. After High School finally had enough of her, she worked in the Times Square peep booths and later as a fetish model and professional Dominatrix. She sold her first short story when she moved to Los Angeles in the early 90s. After nearly 20 years in her beloved adopted city, she still considers herself an expat rather than a native. She’s an avid reader and collector of vintage paperbacks, a Film Noir enthusiast and a Tattooed Lady. She writes primarily Hardboiled crime fiction, but also does work-for-hire media tie in novels. She doesn’t plan to stop any time soon.
Dino Parenti is a writer of dark literary and speculative fiction. He is the winner of the first annual Lascaux Review flash fiction contest and is featured in the Anthony Award winning anthology Blood on the Bayou. His work can be found in Pantheon Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Pithead Chapel, as well as other anthologies. He is a fiction editor at Gamut Magazine and a member of the HWA. His short-fiction collection, Dead Reckoning and Other Stories, is now out with Crystal Lake Publishing. When not purging his soul into a laptop thanks to a far-too-early exposure to Stephen King, Scorsese movies, and Camus, he can be found photographing the odd junk pile, building furniture, or earning a few bucks as a CAD drafter. He lives in Los Angeles.
Constantine Singer grew up in Seattle and earned his BA from Earlham College and his Masters from Seattle University. He currently lives in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles with his family and teaches history at a high school in South LA. He is of the opinion that all foods are better eaten as a sandwich or a taco. This is his first novel.
Steven
Timothy Long spent time in the US Navy, worked for a major game corporation, an aeronautics company, and was in the IT field for 15 years as an engineer before becoming a full-time author.
Crystal Connor is a Washington State native who loves anything to do with monsters, bad guys, rogue scientific experiments, jewelry, sky-high high-heeled shoes & unreasonably priced handbags. She is also the founder of CrystalCon, a symposium that brings both Science Fiction & Fantasy writers and STEM professions together to mix and mingle with fans, educators, and inventors in attempts to answer a new take on an age-old question … which came first, the science or the fiction? When she’s not terrorizing readers she reviews indie horror and science fiction films for both her personal blog and www.HorrorAddicts.net
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Claudia Casper is the author of the novels The Reconstruction and The Continuation of Love by Other Means, which was short-listed for the Ethel Wilson BC Book Prize, and most recently, The Mercy Journals. Her writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, Geist, Event, Best Canadian Short Stories(Oberon), the anthology Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told(Vintage), edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson and Canadian Content. She is writing the screenplay for a 3D feature film France/Canada coproduction of The Reconstruction. Her work has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, and Germany. With Anne Giardini, Casper conceived the 
Robert Kerbeck is a lifetime member of The Actors Studio who has worked extensively in theater, film, and television.
Brian Corley is based out of Austin, Texas, and enjoys looking for the strange underbelly of his beloved city. When Corley isn’t exploring the unknown, he can be found in his home office dreaming up his next comic fantasy novel. For more info, visit his website at 
Kathleen Kaufman is a native Coloradan and long-time resident of Los Angeles, California. She is a University of Southern California alum, teaches high school English, and is a writing and composition adjunct professor at Santa Monica College. In addition to writing, Kathleen is an avid amateur photographer and has published work in The Huffington Post and other publications. When not writing, she probably has a camera in hand or is curled up with a good horror novel. Kathleen currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, terrier, and a pack of cats.
Adam Korenman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, around the same year “Rambo: First Blood II” was released. After taking a gap year to study abroad and work on curing his crippling paleness, Adam enrolled in Boston University to study medicine. He found that to be super hard, so he switched over to Communication, because that sounded more his speed. He quickly found a love for the written word. At the same time, Adam caught a different kind of bug and joined the military, because that’s how all great stories begin. As an officer in the Army, Adam served in such exotic locations as Washington, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Georgia. He has been an infantry grunt, a tank commander, and he Captain of an entire company of Soldiers. Given the fact that you haven’t heard of his military exploits, it’s safe to say he never screwed up too badly. Adam ended his service in 2017. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Adam was struck by two things at once: Wonder, and an organic soy free-range open source Frisbee. Since changing his driver’s license, Adam has become the Video Game Section Editor for CC2KOnline, written four novels, won awards for five short films, and briefly starred in a series of videos for Machinima.com. His proudest moment is still when, while receiving an autograph, Adam was able to make Nathan Fillion
Melissa Jane Osborne is an actor, writer, and teller of stories in film, theater, TV, and new media. She’s created award winning graphic novels (The Wendy Project), the first interactive scripted iPhone game for teenagers, and videos. She works to give voice to things that we have trouble talking about.
Eli Ryder lives in a small desert suburb of Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, where he writes dark fiction and the occasional bit of drama and criticism. He teaches college English, is a Co-founding Editor of 
