Writing from a 24-hour coffeehouse in Austin, Jon Black is an author, game designer, and music journalist. His distinctive blend of historical fiction with pulp, supernatural, or Mythos twists has been described as “historical fan service.” Jon’s best known publications include the award-winning Bel Nemeton series, which one reviewer dubbed “Tomb Raider for intellectuals,” combining 6th-century Arthurian historical fantasy with 21st-century pulp, as well as the music-driven Jazz Age supernatural mystery Gabriel’s Trumpet, named Best Horror Novel of 2019 by the Critters’ Readers Choice poll. His Hill Country supernatural stories, set in the fictional Junzt County, are being compiled into a collection due out in 2022.
Come meet Kathleen Baldwin at ArmadilloCon! More than 600,000 copies of Kathleen Baldwin’s books are in the hands of readers around the globe. Her books have been translated into several languages, and a Japanese publisher even made Lady Fiasco into a manga. Stranje House, her alternate history series for teens was licensed by Scholastic for school book-fairs and optioned for film by Ian Bryce, producer of Spider-Man, Transformers, and other blockbusters. #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot calls Baldwin’s Stranje House series, “completely original and totally engrossing…kept me reading until late into the night.” New York Times Book Review called it “Enticing from the first sentence.”
David Afsharirad will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021! David Afsharirad is the editor of The Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction anthology series, from Baen Books. His short stories have appeared in various print and online markets. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons.
Stina Leicht is an award-nominated novelist, short story writer, and feminist essayist. Currently, she has five novels in print. The most recent one, Persephone Station, was released January 5, 2021, by Saga Press. She is also one of many hosts for the Hugo-nominated podcast Skiffy and Fanty. She’s a Trekkie, a SF/Fantasy/Horror fan, and loves reading nonfiction. She has studied architecture, martial arts, and fencing. She enjoys a broad range of music, and is into muscle cars and roadsters. Her degree is in computer animation. So, you guessed it, she enjoys animated films too.
Jen Finelli will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021! Jen Finelli is a world-traveling scifi author who’s ridden a motorcycle in a monsoon, swum with sharks, crawled under barbed wire in the mud, and hiked everywhere from hidden coral deserts and island mountains to steaming underground urban tunnels littered with poetry. She was once locked inside a German nunnery, and recently had to find her way through swamp-filled Korean foothills dotted with graveyards on Friday the 13th under a full moon without a flashlight. On her quest to rescue stories often swallowed by the shadows, she’s delivered babies, cradled the dying, and interviewed everyone from prostitutes to Senators. If you want cancer-fighting zombie fiction, dinosaur picture books, scientists jumping into volcanoes, or talking cars and peyote legislation, you might like Jen. You’re welcome to download some of her stories for free, or join her quest to build a clinic for the needy. Jen’s a practicing MD, FAWM candidate, and sexual assault medical forensic examiner–but when she grows up, she wants to be a superhero.
Ben Gibbs records, mixes, and intentionally produces The Gentlemen Nerds podcast, available at www.thegentlemennerds.com and wherever podcasts are appreciated. He also assists in editing the 42Cast, a proud member of the ESO Network. He is an East Texas native, transplanted to the Dallas area by the strange and terrible forces of the Practice of Law. Before this, he sold books, shoes, climbing equipment, and ice cream; he wrote radio plays, newspaper articles, and a board game in German; and he released twelve albums with three bands. In short, he did everything he could to avoid his destiny. You can hear a selection of his music and audio projects at www.bgibbs.com.
William Ledbetter will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021! William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with two novels and more than seventy speculative fiction stories and non-fiction articles published in four languages, in markets such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog. He’s been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace and defense industry. William lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog and three spoiled cats.
William Browning Spencer will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021! William Browning Spencer is a writer of novels and short stories, primarily in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His novel Résumé with Monsters won the International Horror Critics award for best novel, and his novel, Zod Wallop, received over 30 positive reviews, with The New York Times Book Review’s full-page review beginning, “Imagine dropping acid with Dr. Seuss.”
Imagine dropping acid with Dr. Seuss.
He has produced three short story collections: The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories, The Ocean and All Its Devices, and The Unorthodox Dr. Draper and Other Stories. His stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Eleventh and Sixteenth, edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Eighth and Twenty-First, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (eighth) and Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (twenty-first), Year’s Best Horror edited by Ellen Datlow, The Year’s Best SF edited by David G. Hartwell, and other best-of anthologies.
He moved to Austin in 1990 and has remained here except for a brief stint in 2006 when he found himself in a small town in Missouri married to a minister, a situation that baffled his friends, Spencer being a lifelong atheist who believes that faith in oblivion is the only egalitarian religion. People will not be disappointed if nothing awaits them. Imagine, he suggests, that you are expecting to shake Jesus’ hand in the afterlife, and, instead, you are greeted by 72 virgins. You might be (understandably) upset. But if there is nothing on the other side of life…well, Spencer argues, you would not be let down.
Sim Kern will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021! Sim Kern is an environmental journalist and speculative fiction writer, exploring intersections of climate change, identity, and social justice. Their quiet horror novella Depart, Depart! debuted from Stelliform Press in 2020. Upcoming is the novel SEEDS FOR THE SWARM. You can find links to all their published stories at simkern.com.
Sanford Allen will be appearing at ArmadilloCon 2021!
Sanford Allen, at various times, has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, a college journalism instructor and a touring musician. He’s the author of the historical horror novel Deadly Passage,and his short sf, fantasy and horror fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Horror Library Vol. 5, Rayguns Over Texas and Innsmouth Magazine, to name a few.
