ConDFW XVIII

Panelists

This year’s confirmed panelists.

Wil McCarthy

Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular “Lab Notes” column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers’ Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of 'P2' was rated one of the 10 best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov’s, WIRED, and SF Age, and his novels include the New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com “Best of Y2K” THE COLLAPSIUM (a national bestseller) and upcoming ANTEDILUVIAN. He has also written for TV and video games, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science.

He holds patents in 7 countries, including 29 issued U.S. patents in the field of nanostructured optical materials.

William Leaf

William Leaf
Major, Infantry, US Army
Retired after 24 Years
1982 to 1989 OK National Guard resident expert on the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union.
HS Science teacher, Physics, Chemistry, IPC, Biology
Member The Royal Manticorian Navy

Terry Gene

I'm that engineer, now retired from over thirty years of working in nuclear power plants, on anti-aircraft missiles, and third, fourth and fifth generation wireless communications systems, and various esoteric sensor networks. Obviously, after all that, one should retire to Texas to farm and ranch. It was the biggest fail of my life. I still have the fifty acres but now I'm a certified Texas Master Naturalist busy restoring the native Tall-Grass prairie.

Before and since my retirement, I've helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity, worked directly with veterans at the VA, served as a Big Brother, mentored elementary students, ensuring that every day's homework was a success, mentored adult literacy/GED students, filled shopping carts for the clients of the local food bank, and ran meals to clients for Meals on Wheels. The richness of interacting with diverse people, especially the most important diversity, that of thought, lead me to put ideas down on paper and ultimately to my four-novel Matryoschka Heritage novel arc: Matryoschka, Matryoschka's Daughters, Matryoschka's Effect, and Matryoschka's Time. I hope you enjoy Sarah, Alex, Sarah Beth, Katie, and Quentin as much as I have.

Renee Witterstaetter

Author, Renee Witterstaetter is the writer of the historical works, “Nick Cardy: The Aritst at War,” “Excess: The Art of Michael Golden,” “Tex: The Art or Mark Texeira,” the children’s book “Kerry and the Scary Things,” and the film books “Dying for Action: The Life and Films of Jackie Chan,” and “Nick Cardy: Wit-Lash” among many others.

Renee is also the editor on such titles as “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Thanos Quest” “Superman,” “Silver Surfer,” “Conan The Barbarian,” and “The Punisher” all current pop culture hits.

Her other editing work includes “X-Files,” “Jurassic Park,” “Xena” and “Hercules” and she is the co-creator'with Jackie Chan and artist Michael Golden– of the successful series, “Spartan X” which will be made into a trade paperback featuring new material.

She is also the colorist on hundreds of comics from “The Avengers” to “Spider-man” to “Captain America” to “Jurassic Park,” among many, many others. “I must have colored a thousand pages of comic books,” she says.

Film work was a natural progression for Renee after this storytelling immersion in comics, and she has since worked on dozens of music videos for Madonna, Seal, Ben Harper and Usher, as well as the feature movies “Rush Hour Two,” “Red Dragon ,” “To ease the lose,” and “Swimming With The Virgin,” among others.

In addition to on-going film work, she is the President of Little Eva Ink Publishing and Eva Ink Artist Group, which represents artists and writers in comics, storyboards, fine art painting and more . Renee is also one of the producers of the “Creator Chronicles” DVD series with Woodcrest Productions, featuring interviews with major industry creators such as George Perez, Bill Sienkiewicz, Michael Golden, Joe Jusko, Matt Wagner, Joe Sinnott and many more.

Current projects also include the children’s book ” “Santa Confidential” with Hagar the Horrible artist Chris Browne.

In her not so abundant free time, she lectures on storytelling and writing, most recently in China and Russia, fishes, dances, travels and is also curating several major art exhibits featuring U.S. and European talent.

For more information on Renee Witterstaetter and her projects, contact: [email protected], or Eva Ink on Facebook.

Ken Ruffin

After serving as president of the award-winning National Space Society of North Texas (NSS-NT) for five one-year terms, being elected to the NSS Board of Directors for a two-year term, and earning a 2018 NSS Chapter Leader Award, NSS-NT VP Ken Ruffin was appointed to the NSS Board of Advisors.

Jimmy Misfit

As a child, Jimmy Misfit wrote soap-operatic letters on motel stationery for housekeepers to read. This ended when his mother mentioned that heiresses jetting off to South America rarely stayed at Travelodge.

In 2018, JMS Books released Jimmy's book, The Silliest Stories Out of Bustleburg: America's Worst City.

Patricia Ferguson

Patricia Ferguson, an award winning poet,.edited several Science Fiction Poetry anthologies and is a member of Poetry of Johnson County, Fort Worth Poetry Society, Poets of Tarrant County, North Texas Speculative Fiction Workshop, Poetry Society of Texas, Science Fiction/ Fantasy Poetry Association, Poetic Genius Society, and Austin Poets International.

Blaise Ramsay

Blaise Ramsay is the founder and owner of FyreSyde Publishing, a company dedicated to putting readers and authors first. Her journey in writing began when she turned fifteen but had to be put down for the pursuit of a collegiate degree in Historical Studies. After earning her BA in History from UT Dallas, Blaise spent the greater part of her life trying to find a career in conceptual art and character design. Her skills soon paid off and she found herself working in the indie gaming industry. Soon however, she noticed creating characters for video games no longer held the draw it once had. One night, during a random Word encounter, Blaise drafted and published her first short story. Titled The Good Luck Cat, it soon earned Blaise a front page feature. This small victory caused Blaise to shift her attention to the world of literature and writing. She wrote multiple short stories which led her to participate in NaNoWriMo. The paranormal romance, Blessing of Luna, the first in the Wolfgods series, was born. This one title gave birth the publishing company, FyreSyde Publishing. The next in the series, Bane of Tenebris is due to release in July of 2019.

Presently, Blaise finds joy in writing mystery, supernatural thriller, suspense, horror and noir. After participating in her second year of NaNoWriMo, her new title, Sealed Darkness, a supernatural thriller, is currently under development.

When Blaise isn’t working on personal endeavors, she is guest blogging, working for three blog tour companies and as a full time freelance ghostwriter.

You can out more about Blaise, FyreSyde and what she hopes it can do for you at FyreSydePublishing.com

Karl Gallagher

Karl K. Gallagher is an engineer at a major aerospace company. Previously he calculated trajectories for a commercial launch rocket start-up and designed and operated weather satellites. Karl lives in Saginaw, TX with his family. His books Torchship, Torchship Pilot, and Torchship Captain are available on Amazon and Audible.

Michael Baldwin

Michael Baldwin is a native of Fort Worth, Texas. He is a retired library administrator and professor of American Government. He is the author of 10 books including poetry, science-fiction, mystery-thrillers, and a children's science book. His poetry has won three major awards and been nominated for the Push Cart Prize.

Bret McCormick

From 1984 to 1996 Bret McCormick was the most prolific producer/director/screenwriter in Texas. His book, Texas Schlock: B-Movie Sci-Fi and Horror from the Lone Star State examines indie filmmakers from the 1950s to the present day. McCormick has edited three horror anthologies and authored two science fiction novels.

Kim Redford

Kim Redford is a bestselling, multi-published author. She is currently writing an acclaimed cowboy firefighter series set in North Texas for Sourcebooks Casablanca. She divides her time between homes in Texas and Oklahoma, where she's a rescue cat wrangler and horseback rider'when she takes a break from her keyboard.

Visit her at https://www.kimredford.com.

Amber Royer

Amber Royer writes fun science fiction involving chocolate, aliens, lovesick AIs, time travel, VR, and more. She’s the author of the CHOCOVERSE comic space opera series (Free Chocolate available now, Book 2, Pure Chocolate, coming March 2019 from Angry Robot Books). She and her husband have also co-authored two cookbooks (one of which is all about chocolate), and she has a column through Dave's Garden where she writes about cooking and gardening. She teaches creative writing in North Texas for both UT Arlington Continuing Education and Writing Workshops Dallas. If you are very nice to her, she might make you cupcakes.

Charlayne Denney

Charlayne Elizabeth Denney is the author of the Fangs & Halos urban fantasy series about vampires and angels and a vampire cat named Baron. Current Secretary for Paranormal Romance Guild, she reads a lot when she's not writing, researching, or playing World of Warcraft. A trained historian, she thinks the Internet isn't for porn but for doing research. Her beloved Bruce believes she's OCD and sometimes possessed. They live in Friendswood, Texas.

Trakena Prevost

Trakena Prevost was born and raised in the great state of Texas, where everything IS bigger and the people are super friendly. She spends most of her time running around after her young son, working tirelessly to annoy her husband to distraction, and oscillating between being completely obsessed with reading and crime dramas. She also just so happens to write down the fantastic stories rumbling around in her head ' mostly to quiet the voices that take residence there. When not reading and writing, Trakena spends her time working in HR, hanging with her family and friends, and desperately trying to force her love of reading on her little one.

Trakena is dedicated to writing paranormal stories with multicultural characters, where race is not the main conflict. Her passion for this stems from being a young teen in love with paranormal fiction, but being unable to find any stories she liked with characters that looked like her. She hopes to change that reality for her son and all the other kids of color out there who love to read as much as she does!

William Seigler

Hailing from South Carolina, William discovered early on, a desire to see the world. While in the Army, he explored extensively in Europe, including the Black Forest of Germany, Buchenwald, Munich, Paris, London, and Athens. Later, he freelanced travel articles, journeyed to Antarctica on a magazine assignment, and flew cargo jets.

He now writes and teaches geology at Weatherford College.

Seth Skorkowsky

Seth Skorkowsky has always gravitated to the darker sides of fantasy, preferring horror and pulp heroes over knights in shining armor. He’s published four novels and many short stories.

When not writing, Seth enjoys cheesy movies, tabletop RPGs, making YouTube videos, and traveling the world with his wife.

Website: skorkowsky.com

Twitter: @SSkorkowsky

Ava Morgan

Ava Morgan writes steampunk and paranormal romance. In a distant parallel universe, she once worked in the legal field. Ava’s bestselling steampunk adventure series Curiosity Chronicles is still going strong with the upcoming release of The Scarborough Affair. When she’s not writing, Ava can be found bicycling with her husband, listening to Baby Shark for the trillionth time with her daughter, and traveling

Visit her site at www.avamorgan.com for the latest updates.

Julie Barrett

Julie Barrett is a writer, photographer, and maker of interesting things from Plano, TX. She is also a founding member of The Generic Radio Workshop, and sells photography and art through SteamCat.net. Julie writes short stories, radio plays, and whatever else helps pay the bills. She hates the bills.

Find her at Stately Barrett Manor at www.barrettmanor.com.

Dantzel Cherry

When Dantzel Cherry is not raising her daughter or teaching Pilates and dance, she is writing science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels. Dantzel’s short fiction has appeared in Fireside, IGMS, Cast of Wonders, Galaxy’s Edge, Future Science Fiction, and other magazines and anthologies. She lives near Houston with her husband, daughter, and obligatory cat.

You can find her work at www.dantzelcherry.com.

Tex Thompson

Arianne “Tex” Thompson is a 'rural fantasy' author, egregiously enthusiastic speaker, and professional ruckus-raiser. She is the author of the Children of the Drought epic fantasy Western trilogy, an instructor for LitReactor, and 'chief instigator' of WORD ' Writers Organizations 'Round Dallas. Find her online at thetexfiles.com and wordwriters.org!

Stephen Sanders

Steve Sanders is the current President of the Fort Worth Poetry Society, an actor, a councilor for the Poetry Society of Texas, the co-owner of Blackbead Books and Seadog Studios, and, to boot, a published and award-winning poet . He’s also sold a few short stories and spends a lot of time on stage performing with the Seadog Slam, the Steamdogs, and as a solo performer. He will be co-sponsoring our “adventure poetry slam” again this year and bringing several members of the Fort Worth Poetry Society to this final edition of ConDFW. Wanna talk poetry? The writing, publishing, performing, and selling of it? Talk to this guy.

Barbara Ann Wright

Barbara Ann Wright writes novels when not ranting on her blog. Her work has made Tor.com's Reviewer's Choice lists, was a Foreword Review BOTYA Finalist, a Goldie finalist, a Lambda Award finalist, and has won three Rainbow Awards.

Patricia Burroughs

Award-winning screenwriter and bestselling novelist Patricia Burroughs loves Pratchett, Aaronovitch, Dunnett, and Heyer. A lifelong Anglophile, she travels the British Isles researching The Fury Triad, the epic YA romantic fantasy that has taken over her life and heart. She and her husband are living happily-ever-after in Dallas.

She also wants to know if vets see a higher percentage of Chihuahua injuries than other breeds due to their tendency to trash-talk dogs beyond their weight class.

John Delaughter

John DeLaughter is a planetologist living on a sailboat with Nimrod the cat. His work has taken him to all seven continents where he always meets the nicest people. Among the stories he's had published is Soul Standard (in Strange Economics). Right now, John is working with Mel. White on new Duncan & Mallory stories; their latest, Weredragon's Dare, is available on Amazon.

Melia Newman

Fantasy artist, face painter, burlesque dancer, costumer. Melia is a creative spirit from the time she made her first mark in the world, using her mother’s lipstick on the walls. She likes to paint digitally, traditionally, on faces or with glitter and rhinestones.

Ethan Naht

Ethan Naht worked several years in TV/Film/Radio. He is an author, journalist, screenwriter, photographer, & musician. He has over 30 published stories plus two story collections: Of Monsters & Madmen and The Undead Ate My Head plus the novellas The Savage Caged and Wings of Mercury

Check out his website at http://www.NahteWords.com.

S. Boyd Taylor

Samuel Boyd Taylor has been published in such markets as Chi Zine, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Drabblecast. He lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife and daughter, where pursues many strange and wonderful hobbies, such as meditation, Tai Chi, and singing along as loud as he can to the Beatles' 'Hello Goodbye.'
You can find him on twitter and facebook as 'Samuel Boyd Taylor', and on his website at: www.samuelboydtayor.com

Karen Bogen

Editor/copyeditor and writer, K.B. Bogen combines technology and humor with a dash of the macabre. A native Texan, she holds a BSCSE degree from UT Arlington, and several health and nutrition certifications. She knits compulsively and reads forensic anthropology textbooks for fun. Current WIP: the third book in the QUEST series.

C. Dean Andersson

C. Dean Andersson's Sword & Sorcery Saga featuring warrior woman Bloodsong is in revised-expanded editions from Crossroad Press. Ditto his horror novels, I AM DRACULA, I AM FRANKENSTEIN, BURIED SCREAMS, TORTURE TOMB, RAW PAIN MAX, and FIEND. Being revised for a new edition is THE LAIR OF ANCIENT DREAMS.

Find him at www.cdeanandersson.com

Michelle Muenzler

Michelle Muenzler, known at local conventions as 'The Cookie Lady', writes things both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. She’s been published in numerous magazines and takes immense joy in crinkling words like little foil puppets.

Find more of her work at www.michellemuenzler.com.

William Ledbetter

William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with more than sixty speculative fiction stories and non-fiction articles published in markets such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Baen.com, Daily SF, and the SFWA blog. His new novel “Level Five” is available from Audible Originals.

More information about William and links to these fine organizations can be found on his website at www.williamledbetter.com

Adrian Simmons

Adrian Simmons is a reader, writer and editor. His essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Internet Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Black Gate. His short fiction has been in James Gunn's Ad Astra Magazine, Lackington's, Giganotosaurus, and Strange Constellations.

He is one-third the editorial team of heroicfantasyquarterly.com.

Julia S. Mandala

Julia S. Mandala (www.juliasmandala.com) holds degrees in history and law. In addition to being editor of The Fantasy Writers Asylum, an imprint of Yard Dog Press, she is a scuba diver and belly dancer. She lives in Plano, TX with her husband Larry and two very demanding, but adorable cats.

Lillian Stewart Carl

Lillian Stewart Carl's work features plots based on mythology, history, and archaeology, often with paranormal aspects.

She's published twenty novels, including the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mysteries, and twenty-five short stories. With John Helfers, she was nominated for a Hugo for a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books.

Her website can be found at http://www.lillianstewartcarl.com

 

T.M. Hunter

Having been compared to the great pulp writers of the past, T. M. Hunter writes sci-fi action-adventure novels and stories featuring space pirate Aston West. He loves to write when he isn't slaving at his engineering day job, trying to support his chronic writing addictions and 80s bass player fantasies.

 

Find out more about his body of work at AstonWest.com.

 

A. Lee Martinez

A. Lee Martinez is a science fiction / fantasy novelist with 11 traditionally published novels to his name. He is best known for Gil’s All Fright Diner, The Automatic Detective, and The Last Adventure of Constance Verity. He classifies his style as Saturday Morning Humanism, and he is otherwise, very boring.

His website can be found at: www.aleemartinez.com

Mel White

Known to her kids as “Indiana Mom”, Dr. Mel. is a scientist, writer, artist, comic book creator, poet, storyteller, filker, and World of Warcraft player (not necessarily in that order.) She is an adjunct professor in the Emeritus Program for Richland College, and when not lecturing about Egyptology or Anthropology, can be found working on dinosaur bones for the Perot Museum when she’s not haunting Dallas Makerspace working as a volunteer eco-educator for Trinity River Audubon Center. In her spare time she is working on the fourth Duncan & Mallory graphic novel and finishing her degree in Egyptology.

Dusty Rainbolt

Dusty Rainbolt swears she was raised by aliens after being abandoned on Earth by grays who objected to the TransGalactic School System.

She's the author of 11 books including the paranormal mystery, Death Under the Crescent Moon, All the Marbles and as well the outrageous fantasy series, The Four Redheads of the Apocalypse. She is the editor of the anthology, The Mystical Cat, which includes her short fiction, 'A Spoiled Rotten Cat Lives Here.'
The new Redheads novel, The Wrath of Satan and her upcoming feline behavior book, Cat Scene Investigator: Unraveling the Mystery behind Your Cat's Litter Box Problem, will be out in 2016.

She's worked as a professional free-lance journalist since the late 1980s, and began specializing in pet journalism in 1995. Like to shop online? Dusty's the editor-in-chief of AdoptAShelter.com, a free shop-to-donate website that benefits animal charities.

Shanna Swendson

Shanna Swendson earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas but decided it was more fun to make up the people she wrote about. She's written a number of fantasy novels for teens and adults and spends her spare time on knitting and music.

Visit her web site at www.shannaswendson.com.

Linda Donahue

Linda Donahue grew up an Air Force brat. She has degrees in computer science, Russian studies, and a Masters in Earth science education, along with a commercial instrument pilot’s certification, a SCUBA certification, and is certified by NASA to borrow moon rock samples. Currently, she’s teaching tai chi and belly dance when not writing. She also performs with the dance troupe Ravenar.

Find Linda’s stories in anthologies published by Yard Dog Press, Fantasist Enterprises, From the Asylum Books, Elder Signs Press, Permuted Press, Benbella Books and from DAW Books, “Future Americas.”'? Upcoming releases include half a double dog, “Jaguar Moon,” from Yard Dog, and a novella in the anthology “Magic & Mechanica” from Ricasso Press, as well as a story in “Strip Mauled” an anthology edited by Esther Friesner, to be published by Baen Books and a story in Esther Friesner’s Chicks in Chainmail #6, scheduled out in 2015. Linda has also published a non-fiction article in the 2007 Rabbits USA Annual. Find her latest story in Esther Friesner’s Chicks and Balances.

She is married to Chris Donahue. They live in Texas and have rabbits, sugar gliders, and a cat for pets.

Linda’s website can be found at: www.lindaldonahue.com

Chris Donahue

Chris Donahue is an electrical engineer and former Navy Avionics Tech living in the Dallas area. He has written stories in horror, military fiction, science fiction and fantasy anthologies. His novel “Death’s Paladin” will release at this convention.

Stephen Patrick

Stephen Patrick lives in the heart of Texas where he spins stories in genres ranging from science fiction and horror to historical and everything in between. His latest can be found in Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol 2.

Teresa Patterson

Teresa's work includes, The World of Shannara (Terry Brooks), The World of the Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan), No Quarter (Robert Asprin), Combat Corpsman (Navy SEAL Greg McPartlin), as well as numerous short stories, and humorous history essays. She is also an editor, artist, and manages The Armory at DragonCon.

Paul Black

Paul Black always wanted to make movies, but a career in advertising sidetracked him. Born and raised in Chicago, he is the international award-winning author of The Tels, Soulware, Nexus Point, The Presence, The Samsara Effect and Cool Brain. He has twice won each the Independent Publishers Book Award, ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award and the New York Book Festival. He has also won The London Book Festival and The Hollywood Book Festival, and has been on the Barnes & Noble Regional Best Seller list. His first book The Tels won the Writer's Digest Book Award for Genre Fiction and was optioned for television. His new book of fiction is called Dark Slide and is the second in the Dillon Bradford series. He is represented by Betty Anne Crawford, NYC.

Learn more about Paul www.paulblackbooks.com and at Wikipedia.

Frances May

Frances A. May is a retired academic librarian who taught a library school course at UNT about fiction genres. She reveled in the extensive research she did for her class, and has always loved Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is delighted with the proliferation of books with a paranormal twist.

Brad W. Foster

Brad W. Foster is an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, publisher, and whatever other labels he can use to get him through the door! He’s won the Fan Artist Hugo a few times, picked up a Chesley award, and turned a bit of self-publishing started thirty years ago into the Jabberwocky Graphix publishing empire. His strange drawings and cartoons have appeared in over two thousand publications, half of those science fiction fanzines, where he draws just for the fun of it. Most recently, he was Artist Guest of Honor at the Worldcon in 2015.

On a more professional level Foster has worked as an illustrator for various genre magazines and publishers, the better known among those being AMAZING STORIES and DRAGON. In comics he had his own series some years back, THE MECHTHINGS, and he even got to play with the big boys of comics for a few years as the official Big Background Artist of Image Comic’s SHADOWHAWK.

Known throughout the world (though most of the world doesn’t know it yet) for his intricate pen and ink work, it is possible you’ve seen more of his work in titles as varied as CAT FANCY, CAVALIER, or HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN. Most recently he has discovered color, and has completed covers for publishers Yard Dog Press, Zumaya, and Dark Star, plus still doing those old-fashioned black and white illustrations for magazines such as SPACE & TIME and TALEBONES.

His website can be found at http://www.jabberwockygraphix.com.

Rhonda Eudaly

Rhonda Eudaly lives in Arlington, Texas where she’s worked in offices, banking, radio, and education to support her writing. She’s married with dogs and a rapidly growing rubber duck collection. She likes to spend time with friends and family, movies, and reading. Her two passions are writing and music.

Rhonda has fiction and non-fiction stories published in anthologies, magazines, and websites. Check out her website – www.RhondaEudaly.com – for her latest publications and downloads.

Carole Nelson Douglas

After 60 NY-published novels, bestselling, award-winning literary chameleon Carole–she reinvented Irene Adler as a detective, finished the 28-book Midnight Louie, feline PI, epic mystery series–“mashes up herself” with “Absinthe Without Leave”, pairing Midnight Louie with Noir UF heroine Delilah Street in a new series. More reissued/new mystery/thriller, high/UF coming…

Visit her website at: www.carolenelsondouglas.com