Guests

Joe R. Lansdale is a prolific author who works in many genres. His novels include Act of Love, The Nightrunners, Dead in the West, The Magic Wagon, The Drive-In, Cold in July, The Drive-In 2, Savage Season, Batman: Captured by Engines, Mucho Mojo, Tarzan: The Lost Adventure (with Edgar Rice Burroughs), Two-Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, Waltz of Shadows, Texas Night Riders, The Boar, Rumble Tumble, Freezer Burn, The Bottoms, and Captains Outrageous. For comics he's written Batman, The Lone Ranger, Supergirl, and Jonah Hex. He has won five Bram Stoker horror awards, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the "Shot in the Dark" International Crime Writer’s award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book award. A film version of his Elvis/Mummy story "Bubba Ho-Tep," starring Bruce Campbell, will be released later this year. Joe lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Kurt Baty's dream is to create a catalog of every science fiction novel ever written, and to own a copy of every book in the catalog. His extensive book collection shows that he's making excellent progress toward these goals. Kurt's traveled to cons all over the world, often attending and reviewing parties with longtime friend Scott Bobo. Kurt lives with his wife Michelle in Greater Austin.

Scott Bobo has been involved in fandom since he helped out on the first ArmadilloCons in the early 80s. For the last dozen years Scott has been teaming with Kurt Baty at WorldCons to attend parties and review them for daily zines. Scott currently lives and works in Atlanta.

Tom Doherty has been involved in SF publishing since the seventies. He worked in sales at Simon & Schuster and then moved to Ace, where he became an editor. In 1980 he left to form Tom Doherty & Associates and its imprint Tor. Tor quickly rose to prominence in the field, and it has won the Locus award for Best Publisher for the last 14 years. In recent years Doherty created additional imprints Forge (devoted to mainstream fiction) and Orb (devoted to classic reprints of SF and fantasy).

Frank Cho grew up in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in downtown Baltimore, graduating with a BS in Nursing in 1996. Why nursing, you say? Simple. To meet women, and he looks good in white. In college he drew a daily comic strip, University2 (pronounced University Squared) for the student newspaper at the University of Maryland main campus in College Park. He created Liberty Meadows during his last semester of nursing school. (In an interesting twist, the strip was picked up by the Washington Post, but not by the Baltimore Sun newspaper). It appeared in many newspapers worldwide for several years, and now it is published regularly as a comic book from Image.

Scott Kurtz is the creator of the popular gaming-oriented web comic PvP, which debuted in 1998. His site receives millions of hits per month, allowing him to work on the strip full time since 2000. PvP now appears in PC Gamer, Dragon Magazine, online at Gamespy.com, and has its own bimonthly comic book from Dork Storm Press. Scott lives in in Euless, TX with his wife, their dog Kirby and cat Tiffany.

Robin Hobb is a prolific writer under her own name and as Megan Lindholm. She’s the author of The Farseer trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest) and The Liveship Traders series (Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny) and is now at work on the Tawny Man series (Fool's Errand, Golden Fool). As Lindholm, she published Wizard of the Pigeons, Luck of the Wheels, The Limbreth Gate, The Windsingers, Harpy's Flight, Wolf's Brother, The Reindeer People, Cloven Hooves, and Alien Earth. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Space & Time, and several theme anthologies, and she has been a finalist for both a Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon award.