Category: Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Samantha Bryant

Erin Penn

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If you have been following my blog for a while, you know I love superhero prose. Samantha Bryant writes about Menopausal Superheroes – teenage years aren’t the only time of massive chemical restructuring in the human body. She also writes horror; she loves exploring things which scare her. The horror is usually short stories and flashes, some of which have been published in anthologies like Deadman Humour: Thirteen Fears of a Clown.

Ms. Bryant is also an avid blogger in The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, participates in the Blisstopia’s Nightmare Fuel Project each October, and is active in the Instagram October Author Challenge – all while holding down a day-job teaching Spanish to middleschoolers. She is friendly, outgoing, and scary talkative at conventions. It’s always weird running into an true extrovert in the writing field. Most of us put on a front for cons, a mask, an act – her superpower is an actual love of being around people and helping them learn things. Having her on a panel takes a lot of pressure off the rest since she can keep a conversation moving without effort.

Author Spotlight: Jason Gilbert

Erin Penn

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People I am thankful to know includes Jason Gilbert. This author is about a diametrically opposed to me as you can get. He writes steampunk (which is not in my skill set): The Rifle Chronicles and Gaslit Insurrection, just to name two. He is integral to many of the local film festivals in the Charlotte area such as ConCarolinas. This grew out of love of bad movies, for which he wrote the book – Bad Movie Beware!: 100 Movies No Human Being Should Ever Watch. And he also publishes Urban Fantasy through Falstaff with The Coldstone Files.

His day job is teaching.

He can also loves heavy metal music and can lug books like a fork lift when at cons.

He’s great fun to know if every now and again our non-overlapping interests make conversation a little surreal with the explanations required.

Author Spotlight: Theresa Glover

Erin Penn

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Some people are Rays of Sunlight to this Happy World; Theresa Glover is not one of them. A self-described relapsed writer and dream-chaser, Ms. Glover creates unique and twisted characters for her horror and urban fantasy writing. The Unbidden comes from the horror end of things and Caitlin Kelley is at the beginning of her urban fantasy. Her writing lives between where all things end and new hope hasn’t arrived. Except for Caitlin who lives in the Bubba-verse, which skews to humor. 

If you drop by the Falstaff booth at conventions, you will find her cheerful face working the booth while she, in her capacity of chief minion, orders the rest of the staff around like marionettes. 

Outside of conventions, whether working a day job or writing, Ms. Glover crawls through the dark depths of the human psyche in search of new, frightening character inspirations. For relaxation, she dissects horror movies in the dark. Writing horror and other genres perks her up, makes her happy.

Read her happy twistedness – horror or urban fantasy.

Author Spotlight: Larry N. Martin

Erin Penn

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Larry N. Martin is part of the Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin writing team. Together they have created the steampunk Jake Desmet Adventures, the urban fantasy monster hunter Mark Wojcik – a mechanic out of Pennsylvania, the post-apocalypse Wasteland Marshals, the historic fantasy steelworker Joe Mack, and I am going to stop there for brevity. I know there is more; this team is so prolific they have their own imprint: Sol Publishing … and they still create works for other medium and small presses. 

For the most part, Ms. Martin runs the social media and marketing end of the post-production while Mr. Martin takes care of the editing and uploads. Watching them churn words is like watching a waterfall, the magic never ends.

Even with all of that, Mr. Martin creates books on his own including the fantasy The Splintered Crown and the science fiction novel Salvage Rat.

Of all the many genres he works in, I’m going to say Mr. Martin loves Steampunk the best. He even cosplays in steampunk at conventions. I’m not sure it’s his favorite genre to write in, but his eyes sparkle the most when he gets on the Steampunk and Costuming panels.

Author Spotlight: Sarah Andersen

Erin Penn

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If you have spent any time on the interwebs, you have had Sarah’s Scribbles forward to you at least once. This lovely awkward, happy woman often pops up with words of silliness and wisdom in my Facebook stream.

I’ve enjoyed the webcomic enough I thought I would send the author a little support so she can continue to create more of these comics I’ve enjoyed so much therefore Book Was Purchased. (Make more, Sarah Andersen, please.)

If a book is too much of a commitment, consider her patreon.

“Adulthood is a Myth” contained some old and NEW favorites. For example: 

“So what are your hobbies?” 
“Well I go on Wikipedia, and I’ll read an interesting page and follow the links to OTHER cool pages … then I’ll read those. I could do it all day!” (other speaker response blank) Sara blinks before responding with a touch of confusion. “Is that not a valid hobby?”

If you would consider Wikipedia-rabbit-hole-exploration a valid hobby, then this book is for you!