Author Feature: Joanna White

Joanna is the author of THE VALIANT book series.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I’ve been writing since I was ten but after high school I wanted to turn it into a career, so I self published at first, until Hunter and Shifter both got accepted by traditional publishers.

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Author Feature: Glen Kenner

Kenner is the author of THE FIRST – an action thriller with a bit of magical realism (soft sci-fi) and horror. It’s the first of a planned ongoing series of 3 novels, and by the looks of it, might appeal to fans of the Unbreakable, Split, and Glass movies.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I’ve been writing short stories for 30 years, since getting my degree in English – Creative Writing and have dozens of stories published in print and online, including in Japan, where I lived for 3 years.

Author Feature: Ryan Smithson

Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI (HarperCollins, 2009) and 10 Klicks South of Whiskey (Black Rose, 2018) are two books by Ryan Smithson.

“GOW is my memoir of my service in Iraq and has been selling well for several years. 10K is my latest release and about a wayward street magician who gets arrested and given the choice to go the jail or join the Army. He has a reckoning of the soul when he witnesses his leader make a fatal mistake during a mission.”

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

Writing was always something I could do, but I didn’t realize how special it was until I had a reason to bleed onto the page. I was home from Iraq for about a year, had not talked to anyone about anything, when an essay assignment in a college English class changed my life forever. I wrote about one of our engineering missions, and the catharsis was indescribable. The professor asked me to read it to the class, and one of the students, who had no idea I was in the Army before then, raised his hand and said, “You gave me a whole new perspective on this.” That’s when I knew I had to write not only for myself but to share the human experience with others.
That essay began a flood of other essays, which eventually became my memoir, “Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI” (HarperCollins, 2009). My second book, “10 Klicks South of Whiskey,” was published in 2018 and began as a play I wrote for my master’s thesis. I’ll talk more about that below.

Author Feature: Lee Williams

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I am a journalist and writer living in Dorset, UK, with my wife, rampaging toddler And newborn son. I write about technology, innovation, green issues and political commentary for various publications including The Independent, The Guardian, Wired, Private Eye and International Business Times. Skerryvore is my first, and hopefully not last, novel!

Author Feature: Gustavo Bondoni

I am an Argentine author who writes primarily in English. My debut novel, Siege was published in 2016, while two others, Outside and Incursion, were published in 2017. On the short fiction side, I have over two hundred short stories published in fourteen countries. They have been translated into seven languages. My writing has appeared in Pearson’s Texas STAAR English Test cycle, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Perihelion SF, The Best of Every Day Fiction and many others.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

In 2018, my short fiction was a finalist in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and also received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award.

I have also published two reprint collections, Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011). The Curse of El Bastardo (2010) is a short fantasy novel.

I got into writing because, eventually, the stories I used to torture my younger brother with when I was a kid needed to find some other outlet… so I began to write them down.

Author Feature: B. Michael Stevens

B. Michael Stevens Mechs and Magic! Mil Sci-Fi meets Urban Fantasy in a dystopian future. Lots of action.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I got into writing when I got injured and quit MMA. I’ve always been a DM for tabletop role-playing games and thought I should share my stories with more than my six players.

Author Feature: Steve Salmon

Steve Salmon’s It’s A New Life! Mom Is Gone is about a man with severe Cerebral palsy, who loses his mother from a brief illness.  After living with her for forty-seven years, he becomes an adult overnight.  Through the love of his family and friends, he becomes independent.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I have severe Cerebral palsy.  Morse code is how I write since I’m unable to use my hands.  Swaying my head back and forth all day is how I write.  It’s a slow process, but it works for me.  When I was eighteen, I was labeled unemployable by the government.  My dream was to go to college.  It made me angry that I wasn’t a chance to succeed.  After spending two years at home, my mother put me through school herself.  My anger made me want to tell my story.  That’s why I became a writer.

Author Feature: Kathleen Jones

A graduate of the University of Toronto and Ryerson University’s Certificate in Publishing Program, Kathleen Jones toughed it out in the corporate world for over thirty (long) years, chiefly as an editor for various Canadian book publishers. Some of the time, she had the opportunity to do the type of work that she enjoyed . . . but too all often, she didn’t. Towards the end of her corporate career, the type of work that interested and challenged Kathleen began to slip away, and she became less and less happy.

Then one day, Kathleen realized something: creative, out-of-the box thinkers like her didn’t belong in the corporate world, and if she wanted “meaningful” work, she’d have to create it for herself.

That was when Kathleen decided to pursue the only work that she’d ever really wanted to do since she was a child: the work of a novelist!

Author Feature: Dan Petrosini

Dan Petrosini writes Am I the Killer? which is Book 1 in A Luca Mystery Series. It is a story that explores the effects of a brain injury. The idea for it came from watching a documentary on HBO called Crash Reel which followed an Olympic snowboarder who suffered a traumatic brain injury.
In my novel, a returning Marine suffers a brain injury and is accused of murdering a man who bullied him as a child. The investigation is complicated by the marine’s inability or unwillingness to recall the events on the night of the murder.
Homicide detective Frank Luca leads the investigation and the book was so well received that I wrote featuring him.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

Born in NYC but living in S.W. Florida, I am married with two daughters and a needy Maltese. I began writing stories as a child and enjoyed expressing my ideas through them. When it came to longer format, ie novels, I started many but finished none until about 25 years ago when I finally pushed one over the finish line. Since that time, I have whittled away at my non-completion rate and complete most projects.

Author Feature: CM Cevis

Cevis writes a heroine-led Urban Fantasy series, the  starter book tells the story of the origins of the preternatural civil war.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I’m a 37 year old mother, reader, writer and gamer. I’ve always been interested in reading, as my mother was and still is a rabid consumer of mysteries, but I think I gravitate towards UF because of my dad’s influence of Dr. Who, Star Trek and Star Wars. Mix in the fact that he and I used to watch Rambo movies and the like WAY before I probably should have been allowed, and you’ve got my writing: Urban Fiction, strong women, violence and explosions. Sometimes some romance. Sometimes.