Carrie hold a BA in English from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She writes fantasy and science fiction and drinks a lot of tea. When she's not writing or reading, she likes to go for walks in the park with her greyhound. Her debut novel, The Dying of the Golden Day, is the first installment in the epic fantasy trilogy The Heartfriends, with Book 3 due out soon. She also has a contemporary fantasy novel, The Stroke of Thirteen, and a collection of short fiction called Empyrea and Other Stories. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online magazines. She's very interested in writing about female characters, and while speculative fiction is her wheelhouse, she enjoys dabbling in other genres. You can find her online at www.carriegessner.com.

K.W. Taylor’s debut novel The Red Eye marks her fiftieth publication credit (Alliteration Ink, 2014). Her first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, was released by Dog Star Books in 2016. She has short stories in the anthologies The Grotesquerie (Mocha Memoirs Press, 2014), 100 Worlds (Dreamscape Press, 2013), Sidekicks! (Alliteration Ink, 2013), Touched by Darkness (Etopia Press, 2012), and Once Bitten, Never Die (Wicked East Press, 2011), as well as many print and electronic magazines. Taylor’s two short novellas, The House on Concordia Drive (Alliteration Ink) and We Shadows Have Offended (Etopia Press), were released in 2014 and 2011 respectively. Taylor graduated from the innovative Writing Popular Fiction MFA program at Seton Hill University in 2015 and finished a PhD in 2020. Taylor teaches college in Dayton, Ohio, where she lives in a restored nineteenth-century home with her husband. When not writing, Taylor enjoys yoga, doing crafts badly, and collecting board games. She blogs at http://www.kwtaylorwriter.com. Taylor is also a cast member on the actual play podcast The Cast Perilous.