Contributor Biographies / Tail

Punyajit Mishra: Hi, I’m Punyajit Mishra. I’m currently sitting in front of the desktop in my house in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. I'm typing away at the keyboard, trying to make myself sound witty. I plead with you not to judge me too harshly for the fourteen year old student that I am. I have been writing poetry since I was ten. I have been reading poetry since I was ten. So, pretty much all my affiliations with poetry came after I hit the double-digit. The few activities which have been kind to my physical laziness are playing chess and solving maths. I like to read stories of magic and mystery, both of fact and fiction. Some of my all time favourite authors are Doyle, Dahl and Darwin (no alliteration intended). Academically, I am both a logophile and a numerophile, because both words and numbers are mediums of poetry. Now that our tour is over, I bid you au revoir.

David M. Hamlin is the author of the Emily Winter mystery series (Winter in Chicago, Winter Gets Hot and Killer Cocktail) and Murder in Tolland, a mystery novel which has just been published. All his books can be found in the usual digital book outlets. His website, www.dmhwrites.com, always features two free short stories. A native of Maryland who now resides in the California desert, David's fondest wish is that one or more of his books will be banned in Florida and/or by school or university officials because few things are as attractive as those which bureaucratic zealots tell us are forbidden.

Kenneth M. Kapp was a Professor of Mathematics, a ceramicist, a welder, an IBMer, and yoga teacher. He lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. He was a homebrewer for more than 50 years and runs whitewater rivers on the foam that's left. His essays appear online in www.havokjournal.com and articles in www.shepherdexpress.com.
Please visit www.kmkbooks.com.

Alex Lella was born on Long Island, New York. He lived a pretty dull existence until he graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz and attended graduate school at Emerson college in Boston. Even then, life was kind of slow and included five years as one of those voices that you speak with when you call Verizon.

Things took a much more exciting, if not particularly lucrative, turn when he became an ESL teacher and found himself in places such as China, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico where he currently resides.

Mark Reasoner is a Hoosier by birth, a Floridian by choice, a storyteller by nature, and a connoisseur of terrible jokes. He currently lives and writes in Neptune Beach, Florida, fighting and losing a continual battle with the Oxford Comma. He also firmly believes that before hell freezes over, the Jacksonville Jaguars WILL win a Super Bowl.

Dorothy Johnson-Laird is a poet and a social worker who lives in New York City. She received a B.A. in creative writing from New School University and an M.F.A in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Dorothy also works as a music journalist with a passion for African music. She has published journalism with www.afropop.org and www.worldmusiccentral.org, among others. A recent poem was accepted for publication by Evening Street Review.

R. D. Ronstad has worked as a wild cabbage tamer and as an Elvis has left the building impersonator. He changes residences frequently for reasons that shall remain undisclosed.

Bill Carrera writes and tells stories that bend between fiction and memoir, creating tall tales that are as true as he can recall them through the haze of time. He learned the art of storytelling by listening to stories told in car trips, and around dinner tables and campfires. Growing up in Chicago and being the oldest of six left Bill well prepared to tell the family stories. Currently, he teaches math in Peru, having taught in schools in Chicago and Brazil as well. He has been published in the Wingless Dreamer anthology ‘Overcoming Fear.’ Currently Bill teaches junior and senior high math, having taught in American schools in both Peru and Brazil.

Despite all the aches and pains of getting old, M. Kelly Peach believes he is living his best life in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He enjoys time with his children and grandchildren, hiking, reading and collecting books, and baking. His author's website is mkellypeach.com; Twitter is @MichaelPeach. He has work published or forthcoming in Suicid(al)iens, Entropy, Moss Puppy Magazine, Riddled with Arrows 5.3, The Lovers Literary Journal, 2023 UP Reader, and Calliope.

Tina Lear has written since she could hold a pencil. Four musicals (one of them published by Dramatic Publishing 2005), countless poems, articles published in the Buddhist review Tricycle Magazine. She’s taught yoga at Rikers Island, driven cattle in Wyoming, and performed for thousands at Seattle's Folklife Festival. Her grandfather was Ole Olsen of Olsen & Johnson, whose comedy review, Hellzapoppin’ was, in the 1930s, the longest running Broadway show ever (1,401 performances). She credits his genes in her bloodline for her sense of humour and her way with words. And she hopes he's proud of her now that her work is in this wonderful publication.

Pat Partridge is an old guy whose inner fifteen-year-old is always looking to escape. He is the author of a few novels, including Fast on Fifty about four guys on a cross-country road trip as they’re all turning 50. “Stuff” happens. An award-winning author of short stories, he is also the author of a book of U.S. political humor now in its third edition. His goal for 2023: Write one perfect metaphor. (He didn’t succeed in 2022.)

Antaeus Balevre is a U.S. Military veteran who writes from a lakefront home in Southwest Florida. While cleaning toilets in a bar at age nine, he wrote his first poem on heavy-duty sandpaper-like toilet paper. Antaeus is the author of The Prepared Citizen, a three-book series on Situational Awareness. Antaeus has also written numerous sci-fi and humorous fantasy novels. Antaeus can now afford to use actual paper but prefers to write digitally because of his lousy handwriting.
www.antaeus-books.com.

John Allison: I grew up in the Philadelphia 'burbs. My parents had a washing machine in the basement. I completed a B.S. from Widener University and a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware where the dorms had rooms of washers and dryers. I took full advantage of them. When I joined the faculty at Michigan State University, I was fortunate to always live in a house with a washer and dryer. I taught Chemistry for 25 years at MSU, and another 15 at The College of New Jersey. I’m proud to say that, even in my retirement, I own and operate state-of-the-art laundering machines.

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications.
A new collection and a novel are forthcoming.
He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, he works doing guy stuff, go figure.
He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.
Titles on request.
A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/
A primitive web site now exists: https://www.mark-j-mitchell.square.site/
I sometimes tweet @Mark J Mitchell_Writer

Lesley Mukwacha: I am an African storyteller and scriptwriter who has been guiding and leading international tourists across Africa for over a decade and have freelanced for big names in the travel industry. I write African campfire stories that I usually share with my clients on safari while sitting around the fire at night, and my dream is to share these stories with the rest of the world, to encourage more travellers from all over the world to visit our beautiful continent. My genre is mostly fiction with a few real-life experiences here and there to make the stories more exciting. These stories are also educational to those interested in wildlife habits and habitats, and also as tales for children in schools. Most of my clients who have had the privilege to hear my stories in the last decade have encouraged me to get in touch with publishers for publishing, as they found them very unique and entertaining.
I have also been named winner of The Preservation foundation non-fiction contest of 2022

Jerry Robbins: I am a graduate of Gettysburg College (Philosophy), Yale University Divinity School, and the Hartford Seminary Foundation, where I earned a Ph.D. I served in campus ministry for over three decades.
I am the editor of The Essential Luther (Baker) and the author of Carevision (Judson) and Provocables (C.S.S.). I have published several articles and over 100 book reviews.

L.M. Stanley (she/her) has two addresses: one in Madison, Wisconsin, and the other in Chicago, Illinois. She lives with two humans: one is her husband, and the other is her daughter. She also lives with two French bulldogs, both of whom make the humans laugh frequently. She has two careers: one as an attorney, and the other as an aspiring novelist. Two is her favourite number.

"Bobby "Z" the 81-year-old vet, cancer survivor, recovering alcoholic, original Jersey City 50's bad boy, high school dropout and a new Published Author. (His book "Friday Nite at the Bucket of Blood Bar" is on Amazon.)

"DON'T LET YOUR MEAT LOAF"

Blog: https://talesofthejunkyarddog.wordpress.com

Jeffrey Zable has been searching for the meaning of life since he first emerged from the womb, and though he’s made some progress, seemingly, on occasions, he’s ultimately had to start over again and again. He’s not giving up, but he realizes there isn’t a whole lot of time left. . .

Kenton Adler is a purveyor of things Scottish Heritage at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas. He and his wife, Nancy, play Great Highland Bagpipe in the college pipe band. They live with their dogs, Pippin and Juniper, in a house just outside the gate to the college. Kenton and Nancy are also owned by over a dozen feral cats who join them twice a day for meals. Kenton is the author of a Young Adult novel, "The Silver Pipes of Tir nan Og," and a picture book for children, "An Alligator in Your Yard," as well as a number of poems. The woods behind their home are occupied by a myriad of majykal creatures, but no werewolves, thanks to their late Irish Wolhound, Cuchullain, whose spirit keeps watch and protects them from such things. Kenton also sings, plays guitar, and writes songs, Werewolves HATE that.

Saul Greenblatt:
While teaching communication skills and writing at a community college, Mr. Greenblatt wrote short stories and plays. Since retiring in 2000, he has written short stories, novellas, and plays.

Doug Jacquier is an increasingly deaf former rock band roadie from Australia, which explains a lot. He has recently published a collection of short humor, Raving and Wryting, on Amazon. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways.

Scott Tierney is an author of novels, short stories, the off-the-wall comic series, Pointless Conversations, and the off-the-crumpet super-hero series, Crumpet-Hands Man. Below is a link to his website, with a free preview of the first Crumpet-Hands Man adventure!
www.scotttierneycreative.com/

Lynette Yetter makes music, movies, books, and art to touch your soul and make you think (when her cat allows her to). Her newest book, with Fuente Fountain Books, is forthcoming any second now: Adela Zamudio; Selected Poetry and Prose, Translated from the Spanish by Lynette Yetter. Bolivian Adela Zamudio (1854-1928), wrote a mind-blowing, humorous, animal allegorical story, which Lynette translated for the first time for that book. (Some think George Orwell copied Adela Zamudio's 1914 tale when, about 30 years later, he wrote Animal Farm.) You can decide for yourself. Meanwhile, you can check out Lynette's vintage website created in the good old days at www.LynetteYetter.com.

Dr. Douglas Young was a political science professor for over 33 years before becoming a full-time writer. His essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in America, Canada, and Europe. His first novel, Deep in the Forest, was published in 2021 and received rave reviews, and his second novel, Due South, should be out in the fall of 2022.

DJ Tyrer has plenty of those issues that, while tedious in a brief bio such as this, are greedily devoured when they appear in ghost-written celebrity autobiographies, is the person behind Atlantean Publishing (which has been going for two decades), was placed second in the 2015 Data Dump Award for Genre Poetry, and was short-listed for the 2015 Carillon 'Let's Be Absurd' Fiction Competition, which was absurd.

DJ Tyrer's website is at https://djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk/

DJ Tyrer's Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/DJTyrerwriter/

The Atlantean Publishing website is at https://atlanteanpublishing.wordpress.com/

Sara Corris spent seven years training to become a Shabbos Goy before technological innovations rendered her dream job obsolete. She's currently cooling her heels in Brooklyn. Her writing has been performed by Liars’ League London and has appeared in print and online at That Is SO Wrong! An Anthology of Offbeat Horror Stories, Trembling With Fear, Defenestration, Horror Sleaze Trash, and others.

Daniel Tarker (He, him) holds an MFA in creative Writing from San Francisco State University and a Doctorate in Higher Education Leadership from Oregon State University. His plays have been produced by 14/48, Pacific Play Company, Seattle Playwrights Collective, Actors Theatre Santa Cruz, The Western Stage, Phoenix Theatre, and Spokane Radio Theatre. Since turned his hand from theatre to prose during the pandemic, his fiction has been published in Lothorien, Confetti Literary Journal, and Marrow Magazine. He has also published his research on leadership in multiple academic publications. You can find more at his website danieltarker.com and tarker.substack.com.

L.N. Hunter is a tangly web of off-kilter ideas and eccentric thoughts, masquerading as a human being—and sometimes as a writer, which is much more fun. And harder work. Some of those weird notions have appeared in Short Circuit, as well as anthologies Obscura and Trickster’s Treats 3, among other places. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are somewhat less entertaining. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.

Matt Cantor is a surrealist from Boston, Massachusetts. He has been lucky to work in the past with extraordinary film-makers, musicians and artists, and he’d be nowhere at all, of course, without his partner and his dog. It all comes from them, and he hopes someday it comes back to them. His work has been featured in ‘Fleas on the Dog’ and ‘Thieving Magpie’.

Bill Kitcher has had over 60,000 words of prose published although, to be honest, some of the words have been used more than once, such as “a”, “an”, “the”, and “rhododendron”. Stories have recently appeared in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, Litbreak Magazine, New Contrast, The Sirens Call, The Bookends Review, Spank The Carp, Little Old Lady Comedy, and, obviously, Once Upon A Crocodile. He’s now completed his first novel, and plans to read another one.

B. Craig Grafton’s latest book is Twenty First Century American Fairy Tales and is available on Amazon.

Kevin Ahern is a Professor Emeritus of biochemistry from Oregon State University who is enjoying the spare time he has gained in retirement to write verses, limericks, and other humorous items.

Dawn DeBraal lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband Red, two rescue dogs, and a stray cat, but does not own a warbol. She has published over 470 poems, drabbles, and short stories.

Toni Artuso is an emerging/aging transfemale writer based in Salem, Massachusetts. Recently retired from a 30-year career in educational publishing, she is now transitioning, as well as trying to accelerate the emerging and slow down the aging. She has published, or has short stories forthcoming, in Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, The Broadkill Review, All Worlds Wayfarer, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, quip literary review, Fiction on the Web, and 96th of October.

Robert Garnham has been performing comedy poetry around the UK for ten years at various fringes and festivals, and has had two collections published by Burning Eye. He has made a few short TV adverts for a certain bank, and a joke from one of his shows was listed as one of the funniest of the Edinburgh Fringe. He was recently an answer on the TV quiz show Pointless. Lately he has been writing short stories for magazines and a humorous column in the Herald Express newspaper. In 2021 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted as Spoken Word Artist of the Year by the Saboteur Awards.

Rp Verlaine has long been rumored to be the love child of Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. He grew up in orphanages and first drew national attention at age 5 when he challenged Einstein's Theory of Relativity. with his Theory of Strangeness. Began writing poetry at age six. Published his first book at age 9 titled My $th Grade Teacher is a Douchbage. A collection still loved by children everywhere but banned in many schools. At age 11, he became a monk and began a ten year period of silence, where he watched Elvis movies and danced the mambo, but did not speak. He graduated with a degree in Nude Sunbathing from UCLA and wrote his thesis on curing sunburn with pancake mixture. He served three months in prison for writing haiku and tanka poems on the heads of bald men in a retirement home where he worked as a ping pong coach. He continues to write and many believe he has a bright future.

Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of writer/musician Ralph Greco. Ralph lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey on the East Coast of the United States, trying (yet failing usually) to keep his ever-expanding ego to reasonable proportions.

Harris Coverley has had over 130 poems published across some five dozen journals, magazines, blogzines, ezines, fanzines, toilet walls, motorway signs, and tree stumps, but still finds himself sworn at in the street (a man on a bicycle just earlier called him a "dickhead") for no real reason, and repeatedly told to get a real job by his mother. He lives (partly by choice, partly for lack of willpower) in Manchester, England.

Rebecca Fletcher costs $1.20 a game and the odds aren't in your favour. Read more of her work at saltyturnip.com or follow her on Twitter at @Notaturnip.

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and the Round Table. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon.

Steven Swank: I am a poet among the many other things.
I love getting up to see what each day brings.

To see for yourselves visit my website:
www.creativeimperatives.com

Daniel J. Flore III hates quirky, esoteric poetry journal bios and hopes you don't consider this one one.

Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published. Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity from Piski's Porch Press and a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press...He is currently recovering from morose antipathy since experiencing the Blade Runner sequel
and spends his days in quiet contemplation.

Pat Hull is a teacher, musician, poet, and parent to two children. He rarely sleeps, and in this delirium he writes poetry. He finds that ideas flow uninhibitedly when the brain is functioning at a lower capacity. He has been diabetic since he was 13 years old, which influences his tendency to write about death, ends, and exits. He recently bought a house after the paradise fire in Chico, CA.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined and she's fond of crocodiles and other reptiles. https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Michael Favala Goldman (b.1966) is a poet, a jazz clarinetist and a widely-published translator of Danish literature. Over 140 of his translations and poems have appeared in literary journals. Among his fifteen translated books are The Water Farm Trilogy by Cecil Bødker, Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen (a Penguin Classic), and Something To Live Up To – Selected Poems of Benny Andersen. His first book of original poetry, Who has time for this? was published in 2020. He lives in Northampton, MA, where he has been running bi-monthly poetry critique groups since 2018. www.hammerandhorn.net

Leia John is a writer, jack of all trades and smart ass extraordinaire based in New York.
When she is not writing she likes to drink strong coffee, travel and walk around her home randomly
screeching... her animals don't think this is funny, but she does.

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in the Rockford Review, Qwerty, The Blue Nib, Ligeia, Cordite Poetry, Headway Quarterly and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.

Han Adcock is a writer of short stories and (as yet unpublished) longer works in the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres. He lives in a rain-drenched corner of the UK and really wishes he was somewhere drier.
www.facebook.com/wyrdstories
Twitter: @Erringrey
Insta: @hanadcock1

Brian Rihlmann is a widely published and highly respected American poet writing in Reno, Nevada, where Arthur Miller set 'The Misfits'. Whether Brian has wrestled wild horses out in the desert with Marilyn Monroe is a question only he can answer.

Tiffany Lindfield is a social worker by trade, and in her heart working as an advocate for climate justice, and animal rights. By night, she is a prolific reader of anything decent and a writer. You can find her at: https://www.tiffanylindfield.com/

Richard Kimball, a resident of Chicago, is a retired Flamingophile, (the dregs of his collection are in a closet somewhere) and is in the throes of Lalique withdrawal. (While he still has some, he has avoided getting more since the Lalique family sold the business.) When he is not writing, he is attending to the feral cat colony that adopted him, and his indoor cat, Dexter.

Mark Blickley is a native New Yorker who is fond of somersaulting in the nude and doing unusual things with eggs. A gifted writer, he has spent the last 14 years working on his unauthorized autobiography, "I'm Not Paranoid Because My Fears Are Real." Mr. Blickley, who suffers from ADHD, has recently increased his Concerta medication dosage by 50 percent and is looking forward to a much more prolific and satisfying career in the literary and culinary arts. He believes pizza has high spiritual as well as caloric value.

Chris Nardone, a goofball with cinematic autism, (can recite an insane amount of movie trivia) loves writing totally ridiculous parodies with totally ridiculous and insane characters. From "Gunfarce", "Remember the What?", (poking fun at what really happened at The Alacarte, the cafeteria just down the street from that famous Texas mission) to "They Ate With Their Boots Off", (the true account of a sick, twisted, cowpie-filled cavalry massacre), this author considers just about anything fair game to make fun of. He can be found working at a public library, surrounded by a slew of female co-workers and humorously plotting the next Great American Parody.

Jeffrey L. Taylor's first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in Riff Magazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest. Encouraged, he continues to write and has been published in REED Magazine, di-vêrsé-city anthology, Yale University's The Perch, Gathering Storm Magazine, Red River Review, Illya's Honey, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, and 2020 Texas Poetry Calendar. Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.

Allan Lake: Originally from Saskatchewan of all places, Allan Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza, Tasmania and – until the next move – Melbourne. Poetry collection published: Sand in the Sole (2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications(UK) Poetry Comp 2017 and Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Festival Competition 2018. None of these things have made him rich and sales of his book make arrogance unlikely.

Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA.
He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT.
McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran.
(Despite kissing the Blarney Stone some years ago, he is able to craft pithy author bios and flash fictions 50-1000 words.)

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She has published the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir. Her When Trump Changed: The Feminist Science Fiction Justice League Quashes the Orange Outrage Pussy Grabber is the first single-authored Trump short story collection.

Luke Frostick can be found on the streets of Istanbul. He is not mentioned in a single guidebook.

Rie Sheridan Rose: is a professional cat-wrangler with a herd of five who writes whenever she manages to get them all settled at the same time. Needless to say, her career has been slow to take off like she's planned since she was five. Still, it's going better than she expected.

Con Chapman: is a Boston (US) writer, author of "Rabbit's Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges" (Oxford University Press), and fifty books of humour available on amazon.com.

Jeffrey G. Roberts: I was born in New York City during the administration of President Millard Fillmore. At least it feels that way sometimes. I was raised in New York, and then South Florida. I made lousy grades in High School in North Miami High, because I hated it. I made the Dean's list and had fantastic grades in Northern Arizona University, because I loved it. No brainer. I have a B.Sc. in writing and a M.A. in American history. I've written about 30 short stories, in most genres, and have 3 novels on Amazon and Barnes & Noble: "The Healer", Cherries in Winter", and "In the Shadow of the House of God". I dream of winning the Pulitzer Prize one day, but for now I'll settle for a door prize at Denny's. My personal philosophy is that life is nothing more than mind over matter: if you don't mind - it doesn't matter.

Scarlett R. Algee: Collector of broken hearts, ceremonial avatar of Nyarlathotep, and creator of potato casseroles so good they'd make Jesus slap his mother. Please don't feed the tentacles.

Cretin de Twonk: teller of Arthurian tales and myths as they should be told. His first publication was in this ezine.

Francisco Fenn: Francisco started a charity, aged nine, to aid and succour children suffering from being given daft names. It never succeeded, so he became a writer instead.

Ora Leone: A mother of five little trolls, and an apprentice undertaker. She lives in Cornwall and likes to read horror novels. This is the first time she has had something published.

Gray Larkson: Right from when he was three, Gray knew he didn't belong anywhere. He is six foot five and believes his brain is a flying saucer steered by a dog.

Ivan Maximus the Third: Not sure about what happened to the First and the Second, Ivan spends most of his time writing in a reinforced basement to ward off assassination attempts.

Michael K. Robbins: Michael likes eating, sleeping, drinking and bouncy castles. He is a human being just like you. His favourite colour is asbestos.

Errin Arkwright: Errin Arkwright is notorious for being Errin Arkwright. She doesn't know why any more, but she does a mean banana split.

Jo Battercombe: The first woman to skydive completely naked with a beaver on her head, Jo Battercombe ran away to join the circus aged eleven. After seven years she was medically retired due to an incident involving excitable lions and a trapeze.

Darla O' Yorke: If asked to describe herself, Darla would say "Not a morning person." Likes poetry, pottery and ocelots. (Try saying that six times, really fast.)

David D. Stranger: Enduring his school career whilst being completely invisible, David rewrote fairy tales and took the mickey, dreaming of finally being seen. Unfortunately, he chose a webzine that doesn't take author photos.

Emna Shortbottom: We are still not sure what gender this person is, but neglected to ask as gender has no bearing here. Yes, the name is invented. Try Googling it and you'll find nothing. NOTHING.