Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over a hundred books – including the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus, revolving around a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, Hellbound Hearts, The Mammoth Book of Body Horror and Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue and DeathRay. He has been a Guest at Alt.Fiction five times, was a Guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in 2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival and Off the Shelf in 2012, Monster Mash and Event Horizon in 2013, Edge-Lit in 2014 and 2018, HorrorCon, HorrorFest and Grimm Up North in 2015, The Dublin Ghost Story Festival and Sledge-Lit in 2016, IMATS Olympia and Celluloid Screams in 2017, plus Black Library Live and the UK Ghost Story Festival in 2019, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival. A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he is currently serving as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network primetime television, and his novelette ‘Men of the Cloth’ has just been turned into a feature by Loose Canon/Hydra Films, starring Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You’re Next). His audio work includes the full cast drama adaptation of The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Tom Meeten (The Ghoul), Neve McIntosh (Doctor Who) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV narrated by Ian Ogilvy (Return of the Saint). Paul’s latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film), the Y.A. story The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane), the sequels to RED – Blood RED & Deep RED – the award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell, Before (an Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller) and Arcana. He also writes thrillers for HQ Digital/HarperCollins as PL Kane, the first of which, Her Last Secret, came out in January 2020 (www.plkane.com). Paul lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan and his family. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Robert Kirkman, Dean Koontz and Guillermo del Toro.

Jay Caselberg was born in a country town in Australia and then traveled extensively while growing up and later for his dayjob. He writes across many genres, both at short story and novel length, crossing the boundaries of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and the Literary, generally with a dark edge. He is currently based in Germany. You can find him at http://www.caselberg.net and on Facebook

Gateshead-based Dr Simon Morden trained as a planetary geologist, realised he was never going to get into space, and decided to write about it instead. His writing career includes an eclectic mix of short stories, novellas and novels which blend science fiction, fantasy and horror, a five-year stint as an editor for the British Science Fiction Association, a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Awards, and regular speaking engagements at the Greenbelt arts festival.

Simon has written sixteen novels and novellas. The wonderfully tentacular Another War (2005), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and 2007 saw the publication of The Lost Art, which was shortlisted for the Catalyst Award. The first three books starring everybody's favourite sweary Russian scientist, Samuil Petrovitch (Equations of Life, Theories of Flight, Degrees of Freedom) were published in three months of each other in 2011, and collectively won the Philip K Dick Award - the fourth Petrovitch, The Curve of the Earth, was published in 2013. In a departure to the usual high-tech mayhem, 2014 saw the arrival of Arcanum, a massive (and epic) alternate-history fantasy, which not only has flaming letters on the cover, but the story inside is "enthralling", "intelligent", "impeccably rendered" (Kirkus), and "engrossing", "satisfying" and "leaving the reader craving for more (Publishers' Weekly). Which was nice.

The Books of Down were next, a very different fantasy where what you are is what you become: Down Station was the first, The White City the second, chronicling the trials and triumphs of Down's latest refugees on the run from a disaster that might just have destroyed all of London.

Hard SF under the pen-name SJ Morden followed: One Way, and the sequel No Way, telling the story of Frank Kittridge, murderer and astronaut, on Mars, and Gallowglass (set in the same timeline), where Jack van der Veerden tries his hand at being a starship navigator on a less-than-routine mining mission. The Flight of the Aphrodite will be next in the series.

Special mention for Bright Morning Star, too - probably Simon's most hopeful book and firmly in the solarpunk genre, about the little robot who could, and did, change the world.

Ian Whates is a writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy, and occasionally horror. He is the author of seven novels (four space opera and three urban fantasy with steampunk overtones), the co-author of two more (military SF), has seen sixty-odd of his short stories published in a variety of venues, and is responsible for editing around thirty anthologies.

His work has been shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award and twice for BSFA Awards. His novel Pelquin’s Comet, first in the Dark Angels sequence, was an Amazon UK #1 best seller, and he has seen his writing translated into Spanish, German, Hungarian, Czech and Greek. Ian served a term as a director of SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) and is a director of the BSFA (the British Science Fiction Association) an organisation he chaired for five years.

In 2006 Ian founded multiple award-winning independent publisher NewCon Press by accident, and he continues to puzzle over how the press now has 90-odd titles to its credit and counting.

Ian lives in a quiet Cambridgeshire village with his partner, Helen, and a far-from-quiet cocker spaniel called Bundle.

Originally from the Black Country, Donna Scott now lives in a Victorian shoemaker's house in Northampton.

As a performance poet, she became the first official Bard of Northampton for a year in 2009.

Since 2016, Donna has been the editor of the Newcon Press Best of British Science Fiction anthology series.

As well as writing fiction, Donna has been performing comedy for a number of years and has written several solo shows. She is part of sketch duo Prison Biscuit and the multiple-award winning children's comedy group The Extraordinary Time-Travelling Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

James Worrad lives in Leicester, England and currently shares a house with a cat and another writer. James works for a well-known hotel, in an occupation that never leaves him short of writing material.

He has a degree in classical studies from Lampeter University, Wales, which, he has found invaluable to his growth as a science fiction and fantasy writer as he discovered how varied and peculiar human cultures can be.

In 2011 James attended Clarion, the prestigious six-week SF workshop held at the University of California, San Diego. There, he studied under some of the genre’s leading professionals and also got to see a lot of wild hummingbirds.

He’s had short stories published by Daily Science Fiction, Flurb, Newcon Press and Obverse Books. He also writes screen plays for short films, one of which- Flawless- won the Seven/Five Film Festival Award and was selected for both the Cannes and NYC Independent film festivals. (It was also screened at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider).

He’s a regular on the science fiction convention scene. Should you see him at one feel free to say hello.