Patti Brooks The need to ride and write has dominated Brooks’ life. There were times when she and her husband, Bob, had as many as a hundred Morgan Horses on their farm in East Lyme, CT. Although she has been an avid horse show exhibitor, her real love is competitive distance riding and she has always been game to take on off-beat endeavors with horses. Brooks and her stallion, Peppertime, appeared in TV commercials and were chosen to jump out of a horse-size birthday cake to celebrate the bicentennial of the Morgan Horse. It’s inevitable that horses often trot into Brooks’ writing. She sold her first article to a national magazine at age sixteen and that gave her the incentive to keep writing. Brooks has hundreds of published articles, including Goodhousekeeping. She wrote a monthly column for several equine publications. Her first novel, Mountain Shadows has been chosen as required reading in some NY State high schools. Brooks served as President of the New England Morgan Horse Assn. and has been inducted into the American Morgan Horse Association’s Hall of Fame. Currently she is serving a term as President of the Eastern Competitive Trail Ride Assn. and teaches a fiction writing class at a local community college. Jill Cline Jill Cline served as library media specialist for Springport Public Schools from 1979-2008 when she retired. She taught classes in English and writing throughout her career and is currently employed as a free lance columnist by the Jackson Citizen Patriot. Jill loves to read and she writes poetry as well. She hopes to write childrens’ books in the future. Jill also enjoys perennial gardening, word games, long walks with her Great Dane, Cone Dog, and just savoring the change of seasons with her husband, Rick, on their small farm. Jill and Rick have two children: Kara and Eric and two grandchildren: Caden and Troy. Shelley Costello Shelley is a native Floridian spending her life in Orlando, Florida. Following Bible College she served for 3 years in Youth and Children’s Ministries. Shelley is known as "The Florida Travel Reviewer" and is author of the popular Florida Travel Reviewer blog. She spends her spare time traveling Orlando and the surrounding area enjoying the sights. She is the Author of Road to Hope, and an award winning photographer for her photograph of the World Trade Center, New York City. Shelley won the Mayor’s choice award for Outstanding Citizen of the Year, served in her city as Ambassador in the Chamber of Commerce, and volunteer for community panels and city development teams.... Charlie Craig Charlie Craig was born and raised on a cotton mill village in Watts Mill, South Carolina. He began his musical career performing on a live radio show at age 15. Charlie began performing in bands after graduating from high school. In 1968 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee and began a 41 year songwriting career that is still ongoing today. His fascinating endeavors have paired him up with the likes of Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and many other great stars. Jerry Lee Davis Jerry Lee Davis is a writer and filmmaker. He is the author of the novel Twin City, and the plays We Ain’t Catholics, We’re Christians, My Life, With Love, Hunting for Harper Lee, and The Will of a Southern Woman (as witnessed by one man). He is the director and producer of the documentary films Pop and Under the Canopy. He presently lives with his animals in Atlanta, Georgia. Ashley Dyson Ashley Dyson graduated from Middlebury College and received an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She lives in New York with her husband and two children. M.M. Gornell M.M. Gornell is a lifetime lover of mysteries of all types, and her favorite novelist is P. D. James. Besides reading and writing, she is an avid gardener--with a fondness for roses and fruit trees, and a potter particularly interested in the high-fire reduction process. A long time resident in the Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound, she now lives with her husband and assorted canines in California’s high-desert. Doug Hewitt Born and raised in Mt. Clemens, Michigan and the son of a Ford Motor retiree, Doug Hewitt often relies on the Detroit area for his fiction settings. With over 100 short stories published in the realm of speculative fiction, his work has appeared in anthologies such as 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Maelstrom, and The Dead Inn. Doug’s first novel, SPEAR, was published in 2002 by Sands Publishing and received critical acclaim from Midwest Book Review. His publication credits have expanded into the chapbook realm, including the thriller Slipstream, which is available at Fictionwise.com along with several of his most popular short stories. Doug is currently working on the next Jack Thigpen novel. Patricia Brooks Lemoine Patricia Brooks Lemoine is a Montreal native who had a strict European upbringing in the French suburbs of the city. The only daughter of a French immigrant father and a Montreal native mother of Irish descent, she has been fluent in both French and English since she was a toddler. Working her way through her undergraduate degree, Patricia completed her B.F.A. degree at Concordia University. A music lover, she also rediscovered parts of the city’s music and bar scene while recently completing her law degree at Université de Montréal. She now has a career in the non-profit sector and as a freelance journalist focused on Health, Lifestyle, and Beauty. Peter Lucas Peter Lucas is an award-winning veteran Boston newspaperman. During his career, Lucas’ assignments have taken him across the country and around the world, covering stories from Boston politics and national campaigns to the war in Vietnam, the troubles in Northern Ireland, Cuba, Central America, and the fall of communism in Albania and the Balkans. He covered the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, interviewed Fidel Castro in Havana, and was on hand for NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. He has worked as a political reporter and columnist for the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald and has written for the Boston Phoenix. Lucas is Boston born and bred and is a graduate of Boston University. He served in the U.S. Army in Germany. Balkan Caesar is his fifth book and first novel. Lucas and his wife live in Westford, Massachusetts. Niall P MacAllister His Irish parents having emigrated from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Niall Patrick Mac Allister was born in Somerset, England. He was schooled in England and Ireland, graduating from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. Pursuing a career in acute health care in the United States, Dr. Mac Allister won some National and International awards, also a United States patent in patient revival equipment. Dr. Mac Allister was Professor at New York University in Buffalo and at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia – later, Director of Surgical Intensive Care at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Mac Allister has published or presented more than one hundred articles and papers and participated in televised teaching courses. Moved by the impact of the prevalent social and economic disparities, moral apathy, the rise in crime, unemployment and disillusion among the young, Dr. Mac Allister founded a nonprofit program, Friendships Without Borders, Inc. www.fwbinc.org engaged in promoting conciliation in areas of conflict and discrimination. Its members have been awarded consultant roles with NATO in the Balkans and other areas of crises. Bob Maninger Bob Maninger grew up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, an oil refinery town in the northern sector of the state. He spent twenty years as a teacher and administrator in public and private schools before moving into academia. He is currently an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Bob is published in over twenty academic journals and magazines. His books include the novel Flint and the non-fiction piece The Mathews Family. Bob has two children, Laura and Clay, who have become passionate adventurers in their own way. He enjoys advocating for and living an environmentally sustainable life, gardening, reading, hunting, fishing, and college athletics. Ross Murphy Ross Murphy grew up in the Washington D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. He attended Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia until he completed the degree requirements in 1971 for a BSc in Business Management. Ross has worked in a number of different fields including road construction, painting and decorating, mortgage banking and marketing consultancy. In the spring of 1994, Ross immigrated to the Republic of Ireland where he presently lives alone in the small town of Kilcullen, County Kildare. He is the father of two daughters: Siobhan, living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Aishling, residing in County Kildare. You Will Never Dance Alone is Ross’ first novel. Betsy Hamlet Nichols A summa cum laude graduate, university professor, and Fulbright scholar, Betsy Hamlet Nichols grew up in Lanett, Alabama, where it was her mother's stories of her own childhood in Hawthorne, Florida, that fed the author's imagination and inspired the writing of When Summer was in the Meadow. At home in Statesboro, Georgia, Ms. Nichols and her husband, Jim, himself a published writer, have traveled extensively. Ms. Nichols, in partnership with her niece Sylvan Baker, is currently working on a collection of ghost stories from around the world. Clint Pearson Clint Pearson holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from California State University, Bakersfield (sigma cum laude) and an M.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He completed his residency in family practice and is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians. A former long-distance runner and rock climber, he struggles with multiple sclerosis on a daily basis and now moves about in a power chair. Yet, he continues to write and lecture, remaining a dedicated father as well as a full-time practicing physician. Ursula Pearson Ursula Pearson holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from California State University, Bakersfield (cum laude) and is a graduate of M.L. Sultan Technikon in Durban, South Africa. Now a citizen of the United States, she is the tireless mother of twins, an advocate for the disabled, and an avid food critic. Michael A. Smith Michael A. Smith is a native Montrealer and graduate of both Anglophone Montreal Universities: McGill (Law) and Concordia (Business). An avid traveler, he has spent time living in Europe (Antibes), Latin America (Mexico), and Asia (Singapore), but has always called Montreal home. Having grown up and spent the majority of his life in the west side of Montreal, he has personally been to every place in this guide at least one time. Son of an immigrant French teacher and Anglophone father, he is perfectly at ease in both official languages of Canada, though he considers himself more of a native English speaker. He is currently engaged to his co-author Patricia Brooks Lemoine. Don Stanford Following his discharge from the army, Don worked at several jobs before attending the University of Southwestern Louisiana; then worked in several fields until beginning his career with the State of Louisiana, retiring as public relations manager for child support. He is married to Carol Richard Stanford. They reside near Opelousas, LA and are the parents of three and the grandparents of seven. He teaches a weekly Bible study at the Palace Café in Opelousas. Don’s well-received novel, Southern Kingdom, the opening novel in the Blythington Family Saga, was his first published novel. He has completed a third novel in this series and is currently working on another.