Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

Ekaterina Sedia resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey, and shares these thoughts about the genesis of “There Is a Monster Under Helen’s Bed”: “This story was written as a reaction to an increasing number of foreign adoptions—and the realization that these are often complex and wrenching. I find the conflict between an adopter’s need to help and the adoptees’ frequent inability to recognize it especially heartbreaking.”

Her second novel, The Secret History of Moscow , was published by Prime Books in November 2007. Her next one, The Alchemy of Stone , was published in June 2008. Her short stories have sold to Analog , Baen’s Universe , Dark Wisdom and Clarkesworld , as well as the Japanese Dreams and Magic in the Mirrorstone anthologies. Visit her at www.ekaterinasedia.com.

Cat Sparks is a writer, graphic designer, editor and photographer, with stories and artwork appearing in and on magazines, anthologies and book covers in Australia and abroad. She was born in Sydney, Australia, but relocated to Wollongong eight years ago. She has travelled through parts of Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, the South Pacific, Mexico and the lower states of North America. Her adventures so far have included: winning a trip to Paris in a Bulletin Magazine photography competition; being appointed official photographer for two NSW Premiers; working as dig photographer on three archaeological expeditions to Jordan, and winning seven DITMAR awards including one for Best New Talent in 2002.

“I can’t be sure where ‘Palisade’ came from,” she says, “but I suspect it was influenced by the years I spent working as a government media monitor. Daytime talkback radio presented so much ugliness. At some point it occurred to me that whatever horrible things I could imagine, somewhere out there in the world were people doing them to each other. When I combined this thought with the promising advancements of science…”

In 2004, she was both a prize winner in Writers of the Future and received the Aurealis Peter McNamara Conveners Award. In 2007 and 2008 she won the Aurealis Award for best SF short story and the Golden Aurealis Award for best Australian speculative fiction story of the year.

Check her newest happenings at www.catsparks.netor http://catsparx.livejournal.com.

Born in 1947 in London, England, Tanith Lee is one of the leading fantasy authors working today. After working various jobs she became a full-time professional writer in 1975 and has written nearly 90 novels and collections, among them the best-selling Flat Earth Series and The Secret Books of Paradys, over 260 short stories, four radio plays broadcast by the BBC, and two episodes of the cult TV programme Blake’s 7 . She has won the World Fantasy Award numerous times as well as the August Derleth Award.

Tanith’s most recent books include the adult fantasy trilogy: Lionwolf, Cast A Bright Shadow, Here In Cold Hell and No Flame But Mine ; the 3 YA novels: Piratica, Piratica 2 and Piratica 3; and Metallic Love , (the sequel to her adult SF novel The Silver Metal Lover .) And coming soon, two volumes of collected short stories, Tempting the Gods and Hunting the Shadows. She lives near the sea with writer, artist, husband John Kaiine and two black and white cats.

Lee described the inspiration for “The Woman” thusly:

“The spur to this story was the news that in modern China, and also in some areas of India, young men, particularly the less well-off, are having one heck of a time trying to locate wives—even girlfriends, due to various policies to restrict family sizes to one child only—and the general wish to bear/keep only males.

“It occurs to me too certain feminists may quibble over the ethic of the story, (not that I care, everyone should have their own opinion). I’d just say on that, simply reverse all the gender roles. It works just the same, and the point stays constant.”

Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material—as she did for “A Mask of Flesh,” her contribution to this volume. “I once flexed my archaeologist muscles and did a silly amount of research into Mesoamerican history and culture for a role-playing game. If you ask me when I’m feeling noble, I’ll say that I think fantasy could and should explore a broader range of models than it does at present—but the truth is also that I wanted something to show for all that effort.” Her short stories have sold to more than a dozen venues. Her most recent novel, Midnight Never Come , is an Elizabethan faerie spy story that taught her why more people don’t write historical fantasy. So, being a sucker for punishment, she’s turning it into a whole series. Next up is the Great Fire of 1666, for the sequel And Ashes Lie .

Jennifer Crow lives near a waterfall in western New York, and listens to the stories the water tells. Her work has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues, most recently in the Desolate Places anthology from Hadley-Rille books. She tells us that “‘Seven Scenes’ grew out of a fascination with the ways in which different cultures handle death, change, and the sacred. It interests me how certain places or objects can become symbols for a person’s life, or even for an entire society. I’d like to go back to Harrai’s world someday, and find out what happened to the sacred mountain and its people.”

Vandana Singh is an Indian writer currently living near Boston, where she also teaches college physics. Her science fiction and fantasy have been published in numerous venues, including magazines like Strange Horizons and anthologies like Interfictions , and have also made a couple of appearances in Year’s Best collections. Her children’s fiction includes the ALA Notable book, Younguncle Comes to Town (Viking, 2006). She says “Oblivion: A Journey” came about because she wrote a random sentence, and followed it by another and another, not knowing where it was going, until it led her to some strange places in the far future. The story owes a great deal to both the epic Ramayan and the wonderful, lurid Indian comic books she read as a child. Somewhere in the blend are also memories of summer-time wanderings among Buddhist ruins in her home state of Bihar. For more about Vandana, see her website at http://users.rcn.com/singhvan.

John C. Wright is a philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman and newspaper editor, who was only once hunted by the police. In 1984 he graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, home of the “Great Books” program. In 1987 he graduated from the College of William and Mary’s Law School (going from the third oldest to the second oldest school in continuous use in the United States), and was admitted to the practice of law in three jurisdictions (New York, May 1989; Maryland, December 1990; DC, January 1994). His law practice was unsuccessful enough to drive him into bankruptcy almost immediately. His stint as a newspaperman for the St. Mary’s Today was more rewarding spiritually, but, alas, also a failure financially. He presently works (more successfully) as a writer in Virginia, where he lives in fairy-tale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter and their three children: Orville, Wilbur and Just Wright.

When his first novel The Golden Age was published, it was greeted by the comment from Publishers Weekly that Wright was “This fledgling Millennium’s most important new SF talent.” Since that comment was made only in the first month of 2001, it actually meant Wright was the most important new SF talent of the month. He has written fantasy novels, Last Guardian of Everness and Orphans of Chaos , and was greatly honored to pen the authorized sequel to Science Fiction grandmaster A.E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A , entitled Null-A Continuum . He has also written nonfiction articles for BenBella books, appearing in Star Wars on Trial , King Kong is Back , Finding Serenity , and Batman Unauthorized . He calls “Choosers of the Slain,” his contribution to this book, “a meditation on what it means to be selected by a futuristic version of a Valkyrie to receive the honors and plaudits of history. It is also a comment on the wish-fulfillment psychology that underpins all time-travel stories.”