ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
David Boop is an award-winning Denver-based speculative fiction author & editor. He’s also an award-winning essayist, and screenwriter. Before turning to fiction, David worked as a DJ, film critic, journalist, and actor. As Editor-in-Chief at IntraDenver.net, David’s team was on the ground at Columbine making them the only internet newspaper to cover the tragedy. That year, they won an award for excellence from the Colorado Press Association for their design and coverage.
David’s debut sci-fi/noir novel, She Murdered Me with Science, was rereleased by WordFire Press. The Soul Changers is a forthcoming illustrated Victorian Horror novel set in the RPG world of Rippers Resurrected. David edited the best-selling and award-nominated Weird Western anthology series Straight Outta Tombstone, Straight Outta Deadwood, and Straight Outta Dodge City for Baen. He’s currently working on a trio of Space Western anthologies for Baen, which started with Gunfight on Europa Station.
David is prolific in short fiction with many short stories and two short films to his credit. He’s published across several genres, including media tie-ins for Predator (his story “Storm Blood,” cowritten with Peter J. Wacks, for the anthology Predator: If It Bleeds was nominated for the 2018 Scribe Award), The Green Hornet, The Black Bat, and Veronica Mars.
David works in game design, as well. He’s written for Savage Worlds RPG for their Flash Gordon (nominated for an Origins Award) and Deadlands: Noir titles.
He’s a summa cum laude graduate from UC-Denver in the Creative Writing program. He temps, collects Funko Pops, and is a believer. His hobbies include film noir and anime.
You can find out more at Davidboop.com, Facebook.com/dboop.updates, Twitter @david_boop, and longshot-productions.net.
Milton Davis is a Black Fantastic fiction author and owner of MVmedia, LLC, a publishing company specializing in science fiction and fantasy based on African/African Diaspora culture, history, and traditions. Milton is the author of twenty-one books and publisher/editor of ten anthologies. His stories “The Swarm” (2017) and “Carnival” (2020) were nominated for the British Science Fiction Award. His story “The Monsters of Mena Ngai” appears in the Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda anthology.
Thea Hutcheson’s story in Realms of Fantasy’s 100th issue prompted Lois Tilton of Locus to say her work “is sensual, fertile, with seed quickening on every page. Well done.” She has appeared in such publications as Hot Blood XI: Fatal Attractions, Baen’s Universe issue 4, vol. 1, Amazing Monster Stories issue 3, Nuns with Guns, Water Fairies, and several of the critically acclaimed Fiction River anthologies. In 2013, she won Apex Magazine’s “Merry Christmas Flash Fiction Contest.”
She lives in an unscenic, nearly historic small city in Colorado with a thousand books, three rescued cats, and one understanding partner. When she’s not working diligently as a planning commissioner to change that, she writes, and fills the time between bouts at the computer as a factotum and an event planner.
Find more of her work at theahutcheson.com.
Over the last twenty-plus years, Susan R. Matthews has had a long-running space opera series Under Jurisdiction, most recently published by Baen Books (backlist and all!).
She likes to tell people that the Jurisdiction novels represent The Life and Hard Times of “Uncle” Andrej Koscuisko, Who Is Not a Nice Man. Lately she’s been working on an historical fantasy trilogy set in the “Wild High Places” of the Pamir Mountains between the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain range circa 1840-ish. The first of that series—which Susan says is a little bit like Kipling’s “Kim,” with kinks—was published in 2020 by Forest Path Books, with the second, The Great Wheel of the Spirit Mountain, due out in late 2022.
She’s wanted to write the story at the heart of “The Last Round” for some time. When David Boop offered her the opportunity to try it as a short story for the High Noon at Proxima B anthology, she jumped at the chance. She’s happy with how it turned out, and hopes you enjoy it.
Dayton Ward is a New York Times best-selling author or coauthor of nearly forty novels and novellas, often working with his best friend, Kevin Dilmore. His short fiction has appeared in more than twenty anthologies and he’s written for publications such as NCO Journal, Kansas City Voices, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Star Trek Magazine, and Star Trek Communicator, as well as the websites Tor.com, StarTrek.com, and Syfy.com. Though he lives in Kansas City with his wife and two daughters, Dayton is a Florida native and still maintains a torrid long-distance romance with his beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Visit him at daytonward.com.
Kevin Dilmore has teamed with author and best pal Dayton Ward for nearly twenty years on novels, shorter fiction, and other writings chiefly in the Star Trek universe. As a senior writer for Hallmark Cards, Kevin has helped create books, Keepsake Ornaments, greeting cards, and other products featuring characters from DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Star Trek, Star Wars, and other properties. He is a content approver for the recent Rainbow Brite comics series by Dynamite Entertainment. A contributor to publications including The Village Voice, Amazing Stories, Star Trek Communicator, and Famous Monsters of Filmland, he lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
Cliff Winnig’s short fiction appears in the Baen anthology Straight Outta Deadwood, on the Escape Pod podcast, and in many other anthologies and magazines, including That Ain’t Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley, Footprints, and Mad Scientist Journal. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and a past finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest. When not writing, Cliff plays sitar, studies aikido and tai chi, and does choral singing and social dance, including Argentine tango. He lives with his family in Silicon Valley, once part of the Old West and now a place that inspires him to think about the future. He can be found online at cliffwinnig.com.
Peter J. Wacks was born Jebediah Jason Zarathustra Janney Shults, then was quickly reminted the next day to a sane name on his second birth certificate. Somehow, he never really recovered a sense of normalcy in his life. Peter (or Zarth, whatever, it’s cool) has travelled to thirty-seven countries, hitchhiked across the United States (very funny, no, he didn’t hitchhike to Hawaii), and backpacked across Europe.
He loves fast cars (and is currently restoring a 1964 Corvette), running 5Ks, space travel, and armchair physics. In the past, Peter has been an actor and game designer, but he loves writing most and has done a ton of it, which can be found by looking him up online. (Even if it seems a little cyber-stalkery, don’t worry, go for it!) If you need a starting point his most recent release is from Baen Books, titled Caller of Lightning. These days he is working on new novels and producing films in L.A.
Since he doesn’t think anyone reads these things anyway, he will mention strawberry daiquiris, Laphroaig, great IPAs, and really clever puns are the best way to start conversations with him.
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Brenda Cooper is a technology professional, a writer, and an editor. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast and is an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, CSI, at Arizona State University. Her fiction has won two Endeavour awards and been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award. Brenda’s most recent work includes the novels Wilders and Keepers, which are stories of climate and robots set in the Pacific Northwest, and the Fremont’s Children series that starts with The Silver Ship and the Sea. Brenda is the IT director for a successful local construction company. She lives in Washington State, where she can be found riding bikes or walking dogs when she isn’t at work or writing.
Ken Scholes is the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of five novels and over fifty short stories. His work has appeared in print since 2000. He is also a singer-songwriter who has written nearly a hundred songs over thirty years of performing. Occasionally, in his spare time, Ken consults individuals and organizations on maximizing their effectiveness.
Hank Schwaeble is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Damnable, Diabolical and The Angel of the Abyss, as well as the dark fantasy and horror-noir collections American Nocturne and Moonless Nocturne. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies and periodicals, such as X-Files: The Truth is Out There, V-Wars: Night Terrors, and Weird Tales magazine. A former military officer and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Hank is a graduate of the University of Florida and Vanderbilt Law School, and is a practicing attorney. He lives in the Houston, Texas, area with his wife, fellow writer Rhodi Hawk.
Walter Jon Williams is an award-winning author who has been listed on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and the Times of London. He is the author of over forty volumes of fiction. His first novel to attract serious public attention was Hardwired (1986), described by Roger Zelazny as “a tough, sleek juggernaut of a story, punctuated by strobe-light movements, coursing to the wail of jets and the twang of steel guitars.” In 2001 he won a Nebula Award for his novelette “Daddy’s World,” and won again in 2005 for “The Green Leopard Plague.”
He has also written for George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards project. His latest work is Lord Quillifer, an epic fantasy. Walter has also written for comics, the screen, and for television, and has worked in the gaming field. He was a writer for the alternate reality game Last Call Poker, and has scripted the mega-hit Spore.