Geoffrey Aguirre's science fiction writing is an attempt to create and complicate utopias/dystopias. He believes that expressions of the future are usually attempts to question the direction of the present. He is the author of The Greening, formerly Loop Backward, and has a contract for publication with Terminus Books. Currently, Geoffrey is pursuing a J.D. at the University of Oregon.

Daniel Ausema (http://danielausema.stormloader.com/) is a stay-at-home dad and speculative fiction writer. He has several stories available and forthcoming from Jupiter World Press (https://www.joom.com/nl/search/c.1473502937709676461-55-2-118-3614678038) as well as stories forthcoming from Noneuclidean Caf?, The Sword Review, All Possible Worlds and Mytholog. His poetry recently appeared in Scifaikuest's special edition CD, Kuanta, and will also appear in their November print issue. Originally from the Great Lakes, he now lives with his wife and son at the edge of the Rocky Mountains.

Krista Brennan: Freelance artist. Currently I work mostly in watercolours. My art is largely drawn from dreams, and often has elements of fantasy and the surreal. Please enquire via email about prices for individual works or information about commissions.

Timothy A. Butts: I design fantasy role playing games, I write science fantasy and I blog about my journey into pagan metaphysics and life in general. My dog tolerates these distractions as long as I pay adequate attention to the true essentials of life.

Craig J. Cheney: My two brothers and I have collaborated on a science fiction novel, titled Dead Reckoning, in stores now. You can search for it on Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell?s, etc. More information about me and my brothers can be found on our website: http://www.7CsBooks.com.

Dennis: I am very interested in collaborative fiction and have been participating in it for about five years. I moderate a collaborative fiction site at www.TheCityofStories.forumsplace.com. It is collaborative fiction with the theme of heroes, villains, and those caught in-between in a big city environment. I welcome anyone to take a look at the site, create a character, and submit the character for addition into the community.

Valerie Frankel: Valerie Estelle Frankel was born at an early age. She now teaches creative writing for all ages, and composition for San Jose State University. There, she became the youngest person ever to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and was recently promoted to an office down the hall from the women?s bathroom, rather than in it naruto statues by joom. Her many short stories have appeared in over seventy magazines and anthologies including Legends of the Pendragon, Rosebud Magazine, and The Oklahoma Review.

Valerie'?s very excited about her new book, Henry Potty and the Pet Rock: An Unauthorized Harry Potter Parody, published through Wingspan Press:

Catastrophe strikes Chickenfeet Academy, and it?s not just the cafeteria food. Lord Revolting, murderous goldfish-flusher, needs Really Wimpy?s pet rock to conquer the world! All the while, the least likely character watches, coveting the pet rock for her own sneaky agenda. What part does Socks the parrot, wisecracking pet of Headmaster Bumbling Bore, play in all this? Will Revolting dare the ultimate villainy and spoil the book? Will this novel waste your entire morning? There?s only one way to know.

Many of her short stories lurk on her website, along with writing tips, contests, giveaways, and an interactive fantasy kingdom especially for kids. Readers who long to waste their valuable time can play Chickenfeet Academy Games, check out the Henry Potty eBook, buy personalized or autographed copies, and cavort with flying pigs for hours at www.HarryPotterParody.com.

Stephen Gold is a divorced dad who plays classical piano. He left Silicon Valley after eight years to focus on intentional community and writing. His nonfiction has appeared in Common Ground and Communities magazines. He also writes sword & sorcery stories about misfits grappling with issues like guilt, forgiveness, and respect. He is a graduate of the 2005 Clarion West Writers Workshop.

Jaq Greenspon: I am a writer/editor/publisher who has written for TV (Star Trek, New Adventures of Robin Hood), applied my red pen to works submitted at Iniquities and Midnight Grafitti and published new and lesser known work through the short lived audio magazine, Frequency.

Joanne Hall: Joanne Hall is 29 years old and lives in Bristol, England with her partner. She has been writing full time for three years, and recently had her debut novel published by Epress Online. The first in a trilogy, "Hierath" has been described as an "insane fantasy soap opera", a description which seems as near the mark as any.

Joanne does not believe in relaxation, but can occasionally be tempted away from her keyboard by the offer of a good movie or slab of chocolate cake. Her website is www.hierath.co.uk, and she's always happy to hear from anyone.

R.D. Hammond has been called many things, one of which is a fantasy-satirist. His writing's recurring themes include societal estrangement, the alienation of youth, and flawed relations between gods and mortals. He also owns a very fancy hat. ?? www.thinkpflat.com

Written Works:

The Pflatlands (Archebooks, ISBN 1-59507-130-X) [2006]
"Dave Barry: Giant Booger or Noodle Nose? You Decide" [1999]

Nye Joell Hardy Previously, Nye Marnach: I am 40. I left a life of crime to ... no, wait a minute ... I left a life working for the government to start my own business (making and selling safety training media) and to work more seriously on my fiction.

I've published science fiction and fantasy in ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE, PIRATE WRITINGS, STYGIAN ARTICLES, and other small press. I have a novel called THE CROWS OF BEDU that passed "first read" at DAW BOOKS, which has been there for THREE YEARS, now. That means I have checked my mailbox with bated breath almost 1200 times.

David Harrington, I am 50 years old and live in Portland, Oregon with my wife and two sons. I have been writing off and on for over thirty years. I also enjoy tennis, football, karate & transcendental meditation.

David's full-length work of poetry and prose, Inclinations, is forthcoming.

Keri Hulme is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning author whose writing reflects her close ties to New Zealand culture. Of Maori, Orkney Scots, and English descent, Hulme has been awarded the Maori Trust Fund Prize, Moblil Pegasus Award (for Maori literature), and the New Zealand Book Award (for fiction), among other honors. Her best known work is The Bone People (1984).

Fran Jacobs graduated from the University of Nottingham with a Masters degree in Ancient History in 2001 and now lives in Swansea, where she runs an online gothic website, Megaeras Realm. She mostly writes fantasy, with a penchant for the darker side of it, and her stories have been published in a variety of magazines including Nanobison, Chaos Theory: Tales Askew, Neo-opsis and A Tangled Script of Intangible Soul Engravings. Her novel, The Shadow Seer, Book One of Ellenessia's Curse, has been published by Writers Exchange E-Publishing and can be purchased for $4.95 (USD). www.franjacobs.com.

John Kratman is a husband and the father of triplet girls. When he?s not busy spending time with his family he?s a fulltime techno-bureaucrat. He lives in Rhode Island.

John?s fiction has appeared in markets such as Jim Baen?s Universe, Aeon Speculative Fiction, and Dark Recesses Press. Check out his website and blog at www.johnkratman.com

Mallory: I write speculative fiction where I tend to wander with my writing style, content, interests. For some time my focus centered on writing horror--primarily because I noted that I wasn't killing off any of my characters, in fact I was being way too nice to them, and because of this flaw in my writing, some of my dynamic power was missing. Lately I seem more attracted to young adult fantasy, emotion driven fantasy and cyberpunk science fiction.

Trista Musco: I'm Trista, but my online names are Q.t.R.Nevermore (void), deathisnotreal(myspace and email), mylinoleum(warcraft3), and my aim screen name is secret. Born on July 18, 1981. From San Jose, I lived in Chicago a year, 2 years in Santa Rosa, 6 months in San Francisco, and Cotati for 4 months roughly. What do I like or do? Art, games, coffee... What do I hate doing? Job searching.

A. R. Nakama: Since we're here to network, I'm going to talk directly to you, so no 3rd person bio here. I've started getting published here and there; if you're really interested, check my LJ.

Not only am I interested in publishing novels, short stories, and poems in both the speculative fiction and more mainstream worlds, I have also designed games, shot movies, and recorded radio drama. My special love (besides writing) is designing and running Alternate Reality Games, games designed to blur the lines between fiction and reality. My most recent endeavor in that area worked with the admissions department of a university to increase enrollment rates.

I also am interested in ways technology changes writing and publishing. I recently completed a thesis on hypertext fiction to that end, but those same interests are what brings me to StarMerrow. I look forward to seeing what the future brings with this group.

Camille Picott has an unhealthy obsession for French Fries and Buffy reruns. She has too many cats and watches too much tv. Between all these obsessions/bad habits she manages to find time to write. Her specialites are speculative and flash fiction. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Anotherealm, Women's Voices, Flashquake, Bust Out, AlienSkin Magazine, and AntipodeanSF.

Dorian Pratt: Dorian has tried to create unique fictional worlds incorporating his love of the weird, the wonderful, and the dark, as well themes learned from his years as a student of Indian religions, particularly in their tantric forms.

Kim Richards writes horror, science fiction and fantasy. Check out her webpage for latest on where to find her work at www.sff.net/people/krichards. She writes a monthly science fiction column for EpicSF.com, reviews women's fiction for Euroreviews and edits reviews for MyShelf.com. Additionally she produces her own monthly newsletter and the one for Pretty-Scary.net (an online community for women in horror). Her freelance work includes assisting with resources for Car Free Sonoma, an organization dedicated to people choosing not to own a vehicle.

Michael Shea won the World Fantasy Award for his 1983 novel, Nifft the Lean. He has been a finalist or nominee for the Hugo and Nebula Awards on several occasions. He is widely acclaimed for his fantasy and horror.

Arwen Spicer, founder of StarMerrow, has been writing science fiction since she was fifteen. She has completed two novels set in the same far-future universe, Perdita and The Hour before Morning. Her writing, she hopes, can be considered sociological, character-driven, literary speculative fiction. Arwen has a Ph.D. in English literature and a B.S. in biology. She dreams of being the Dostoevsky of science fiction (and she's modest too!). Meanwhile, she's pursuing an information science degree, with which she hopes to construct useful SF&F databases. Check out her LiveJournal and her speculative universe, The Continuation of Daughter. She writes a regular column for Genre-Commentary.com Yes, she is named after that Arwen.

Caylin Webster: Hey, I'm Caylin (or Pixie) and my handle is Pixagi. I'm a freelance graphic designer (in training) and a fantasy/sci-fi writer. Most of my work is photomanipulation done in Photoshop and digital painting done in OpenCanvas. I also do traditional work such as painting, photography and illustration.

Ann Wilkes has appeared in six issues of Surprising Stories with her serial tongue-in-cheek space opera, "The Awesome Lavratt"(which may never end), a poem and SF convention review. She also writes editorials and book reviews for Gateway SF Magazine for which she is assistant editor. A SF short story, "Marfina" can be downloaded for free from Fantasyreader.com's Hall of Fame. She has two novels in the works. One SF and one mainstream. You can find excerpts of these and more on her website.

When she's not writing, Ann's designing or maintaining websites, listening to the blues, handling publicity for two non-profits and coordinating a two day festival for her church. A paying job? Who has time? Oh yeah...and she has a loving husband that supports her habit (writing) and five children, only one of which has not left the nest.

Farrell Winter: I live with my family in Santa Rosa, California. I have been writing since I created the character of Johnny Space at age six. I was six, not Johnny.

Efforts that are more recent include a few short stories and a sci-fi novel with a twist, in progress. Smile if you?ve heard this before. The novel is just now being set to computer after years of handwritten notes and decades more of having the complete book in my head. At this point the first five pages (chapter one) are printed. Critiques welcomed, especially from eco-feminist, pagan, vegan/raw foods, pacifist, anti-corporate or related viewpoint. Whew!

In return I can offer editing and/or proofreading services. You may contact me at zalmoxis@sbcglobal.net. Thank you.

This site is maintained by Arwen Spicer
Most recent update: 8/5/09