Although Michael Bracken is the author of several books—including the hardboiled private eye novel "All White Girls" and the young adult romance "Just in Time for Love"—he is best known as the author of more than 1,200 short stories. He has written in nearly every genre but has been most successful with women's fiction and hardboiled crime fiction, two genres that couldn't be more unalike.

Recipient of the 2016 Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction, Michael is also an Edgar Award nominee, a Shamus Award nominee, and a three-time recipient of the Derringer Award for his short mystery fiction, with three additional nominations.

Additionally, Michael is the editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine and editor of several crime fiction anthologies, including the Anthony Award-nominated The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods and the three-volume Fedora series, and stories from his anthologies have received or been short-listed for the Anthony, Derringer, Edgar, Macavity, Shamus, and Thriller awards.

He has contributed articles to "The Writer" and other writing publications, contributed a chapter to the writing textbook "Many Genres, One Craft," is one of five authors featured in "Writing Erotica," and is extensively quoted in "The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists." He regularly speaks about writing, editing, and publishing to audiences across the U.S. and Mexico.

Additional information about Michael, including a selected bibliography and his speaking schedule, is available at: www.CrimeFictionWriter.com. He is one of a rotating group of crime fiction writers who blog at SleuthSayers.org.

Janine Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure. She likes to write about magic and myth and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.

Buyer beware! If you like dark romance and a hard-won Happily Ever After, try "Cover Him with Darkness," "Heart of Flame," or "The King's Viper." If you prefer challenging erotica, go for "Red Grow the Roses" or "Named and Shamed" instead. All her other books lie somewhere on the spectrum between.

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Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000. She's also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora's Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology 'Geek Love'.

Born in Wales, Janine now lives in the North of England with her husband and two rescued greyhounds. She has worked as a cleaner, library assistant, computer programmer, local government tree officer, and - for five years of muddy feet and shouting - as a full-time costumed Viking. Janine loves goatee beards, ancient ruins, minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake and eating it, and holidaying in countries with really bad public sewerage.

Her work has been described as:

"Hardcore and literate" (Madeline Moore) and "Vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love." (Portia Da Costa)

Evey Brett lives in Southern Arizona and is owned by two cats and a Lipizzan mare. She writes queer Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Paranormal Romance. She's been a Fellow at the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices and has attended the Clarion and Taos Toolbox Workshops for SF/F. She also has an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University.

Publications include short stories and books with Lethe Press, Cleis Press, Loose Id, Carina Press and elsewhere.

Evey also writes queer SF/F as Nica Berry.

Slave Nano is an erotic writer who writes stories with dark and exotic content drawing on the themes of female supremacy, goddess worship, bondage, domination and submission, sado-masochism and fetish, frequently in fantasy, paranormal or historical settings.

His work usually has dominant female characters and submissive males. His stories explore the tensions between dominant and submissive and the boundaries between pain and pleasure, physical and mental bondage and retribution and reward.

His erotic novel 'Adventures in Fetishland', a bdsm/fetish reinvention of Alice in Wonderland has been published by Xcite Books. His short stories and novellas have been published by Xcite Books, House of Erotica, Forbidden Fiction, Greenwoman Publishing and Coming Together.

Slave Nano lives in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom.

T.C. Mill watches more BBC programming than is probably healthy, takes more books off library shelves than she can ever read (getting an eReader has not improved matters), and is currently writing her next story in a fashionable eco-friendly notebook. Or composing it in Microsoft Word with layers of Tracked Changes. Whatever works. Speaking of work, she earns her living as a freelance editor and disorganized author balancing multiple projects across multiple pennames.

With Alex Freeman, she has co-edited two anthologies of passionate, cutting-edge erotica with the New Smut Project. Her work has been published by Dreamspinner, Circlet, Nerve Magazine, the Bright Desire website, Bust magazine, MoFo Pubs and Cleis Press. More updates about what she's doing next can be found at TC-Mill.com.

Simone Martel is the author of a novel, A Cat Came Back, a memoir, The Expectant Gardener, and a story collection, Exile’s Garden.

Her short nonfiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Hip Mama, Horticulture, Carbon Culture, Antigonish Review and Stonecrop. She's published stories in journals including The Main Street Rag, the Irish magazine, Crannog, Ocotillo Review, The Tishman Review, and the UK’s Neon Magazine.

You can read and comment on new stories online at Fresh.Ink and the French-English quarterly, Short Circuit.

After studying English at U.C. Berkeley, Simone Martel operated an organic tomato farm near Stockton, California. She’s working on a new novel based on that experience.

Colleen is a writer of mainly speculative fiction and erotica. She lives in the Twin Cities, at the intersection of multiple planes of reality.