• Rachel Caine
• Brian Hades: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
• Robert J. Sawyer
• Walter Jon Williams
• Jack Whyte

Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the young adult Morganville Vampires series (Glass Houses, The Dead Girls Dance, Midnight Alley, Feast of Fools, Lord of Misrule, Carpe Corpus, Fade Out, Kiss of Death, Ghost Town, Bite Club, and Last Breath). She is also the author of the powerhouse urban fantasy Weather Warden series (Ill Wind, Heat Stroke, Chill Factor, Windfall, Firestorm, Thin Air, Gale Force, Cape Storm, and Total Eclipse), as well as the bestselling Outcast Season series, set in the universe of the Weather Warden novels (Undone, Unknown, and Unseen).

Her newest urban fantasy series, The Revivalist, debuts August 2011 with the release of Working Stiff.

She has also written paranormal romantic action/adventure for the Silhouette Bombshell line, including Devil’s Bargain, Devil’s Due, and the award-winning Athena Force: Line of Sight.

Rachel is also a contributor to several short story collections, including My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon, Strange Brew, Dark and Stormy Knights, Hex Symbols, and Retro Murder (all edited by P.N. Elrod), and the New York Times bestseller Many Bloody Returns (edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner). She is also a contributor to the Immortal and Eternal anthologies(edited by P.C. Cast), The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance (edited by Trisha Telep), and Eternal Kiss (edited by Trisha Telep), among many others.

Her novels have been published in more than 20 languages around the world. In 2011, she was nominated for both Best Urban Fantasy Novel of 2010 and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times.

A former professional musician, graphic artist, web designer, and corporate communications executive, Rachel finally left the business world in 2010 to devote her time completely to writing. She and her husband, award-winning fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Fort Worth, Texas.

Rachel is also published under the names Roxanne Longstreet, Roxanne Conrad and Julie Fortune.

Brian Hades

As a boy, Brian Hades took to the family business with precocious fervor, even when it meant wearing a top hat with a rabbit hidden in it.

Yes, more than half-a-century ago, the grey-haired, pony-tailed 58-year-old publisher of science-fiction and fantasy novels began his working life as a magician. Not just any magician, mind you, but a magician from a family of magicians; a child prodigy who was entertaining Calgarians by the age of seven.

He made birds disappear, pulled rabbits from his hat. Then, at the peak of his powers, he gave it all up.

"I retired at the age of 14 after seven years of service," he says, "My father had this idea that I was going to be a star. At 14, I had other plans." Given his early experiences in the spotlight, it's perhaps surprising that Hades ended up in a career that finds him working a less showy form of magic behind the scenes as the head of EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Canada's largest genre book publisher.

"Publishing fits me to a T," says Hades. "I like being behind the scenes, the guy pulling the strings and getting things organized."

As head of EDGE, Hades is leading the Canadian campaign to add respectability to the often ghettoized genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. A quick glance of his releases this year--which include titles under Hades' three imprints: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Tesseract Books and Absolute XPress--shows that its international roster of authors tackles a wide variety of speculative fiction concerns.

Hades' authors come from Canada, the U. S., Australia, and New Zealand. Some, such as Australian K. A. Bedford, have earned name recognition in the subculture of science fiction literature. But for the most part, the writers' main contribution to the EDGE brand is imaginative storytelling in a genre that Hades has been fascinated by since he was a boy.

"The magic of pulling a rabbit out of a hat," says Hades, "is not all that far removed from the magic created when you read a great story by a great story teller."

Hades says he first began planning a science fiction publishing business in the mid-1980s, when he still worked with his father publishing literature about magic and selling magic accessories. But it wasn't until 1999 that he devised a business plan. By 2000, he had published EDGE's first book.

Calgary author Marie Jakober's "The Black Chalice" was a story of fantasy and historical fiction. Her tale of magic and sorcery in the enchanted forests of medieval Germany put EDGE on the map, even if it was the only title the company published that year.

From there, the company began its slow expansion. One book became two in 2001 and two became four in 2002. In 2003, Hades acquired Edmonton-based Tesseract Books, best-known for publishing 20 years worth of brainy, academic speculative fiction anthologies, including early works by Margaret Atwood and William Gibson.

With a back catalogue of more than 100 books, and translations into German and French, Hades still accepts unsolicited manuscripts from writers looking for a break.

"Ultimately," says Hades, "we are a means to a storyteller's end!"

Hades takes the same approach to all of the books he publishes, giving each his personal touch. "We want to treat every submission as fairly as possible," he says.

"EDGE is considered a boutique imprint that cares a lot about its authors," says Denver-based science fiction writer Rebecca K. Rowe. "Brian takes a very hands-on approach, no matter who may be editor. He commits to his authors." Rowe published her debut novel, "Forbidden Cargo", with EDGE in 2006. Her latest novel, "Circle Tide", will be launched during this convention.

Hades marked his company's 10th anniversary by hosting a 'Steam and Steel Social' in the fall of 2010 at the Calgary Aerospace Museum. "Its been an incredible journey," Hades says. "We started with an idea and one book. Soon we were in the thick of it and trying to do as many books as possible--within the human limits of time and energy!"

Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing

"We've hung in for 10 years, which is really important in a small press's history," Hades says. "The first three years was a make-or-break kind of time. I figured that if we could survive year six we would probably keep on growing. I'd always thought it would take ten years to become an overnight success." And so it seems it has.

What's happening with EDGE this year?

We've started a new annual anthology which features Canadian horror fiction: "Chilling Tales", edited by Michael Kelly. We've released Marie Jakober's third EDGE title, "The Demon Left Behind", an Urban Fantasy. We published "Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives" edited by Justin Gustainis, and released "Captives", the second novel of the Druids trilogy by Barbara Galler-Smith and Josh Langston.

This summer will see the publication of "Circle Tide" by Rebecca Rowe, a follow-up SF novel to "Forbidden Cargo" and the releases of our second Vampire anthology "EVOLVE Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead", edited by Nancy Kilpatrick. "Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales" edited by Julie Czerneda and Susan MacGregor and a third anthology of the wildly popular dark Sherlockian stories, "Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes" edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec will hit the shelves in the fall.

Finally, "Technicolor Ultra Mall" a novel by Ryan Oakley and "Rigor Amortis" a zombie romance anthology, edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt (previously released under the Absolute XPress imprint) will be released in time for All Hollow's Eve.

But that's not all...there are a few surprise titles scheduled for release under the Absolute XPress imprint!

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer's bestselling science-fiction novels are known for 'marshaling a daunting quantity of fact and theory from across scientific disciplines' (National Post) to produce 'page after page of bold scientific extrapolation' (The New York Times). New Scientist calls his work 'scientifically plausible, fictionally intriguing, and ethically important,' and artificial-intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky says, 'Lately, I've been inspired by the work of Robert J. Sawyer.'

Rob has published in both of the world's leading scientific journals, Science (guest editorial) and Nature (fiction), as well as in Sky & Telescope, Archaeology, and Ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society, and he contributes op-eds on scientific issues to The Ottawa Citizen.

He was the only novelist invited to speak at The SETI Institute's SETIcon, has been a guest on CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks and NPR's Science Friday, and has appeared 38 times on Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet and its predecessor @Discovery.ca. He hosted the skeptical TV series Supernatural Investigator for Vision TV, had his own science column on CBC Radio ('Science FACTion'), and frequently comments on science stories for CBC Newsworld.

Rob has given talks at the Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas; the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania; the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo; and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen's University.

He's presented keynotes at the Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson, the Sanofi-Aventis BioTech Challenge in Saskatoon, the International Symposium on Physical Sciences in Space in Toronto, the Manitoba Business of Science symposium in Winnipeg, and the Canadian Conference on Intelligent Systems in Calgary, and at annual meetings of the Canadian Science Writers' Association, the Science Teachers Association of Ontario, and the Federation of State Medical Boards.

Rob has spoken on machine intelligence at the Googleplex and on consciousness as an emergent property of sufficient complexity at TEDxManitoba, and participated in conferences hosted by NASA and Gartner. He has given talks at the Library of Congress, the Ontario Science Centre, the McLaughlin Planetarium, and both the Edmonton and Calgary TELUS Worlds of Science.

In 2009, he was writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source, Canada's National Synchrotron facility (a position created specifically for him, and the first-ever writer-in-residence post at a Canadian science facility), and he served as science advisor for the ABC TV series FlashForward, which was adapted from his Aurora Award-winning novel of the same name. He is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and holds an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University.

Walter Jon Williams

Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota in 1953, and now lives in New Mexico with his wife, Kathy Hedges. He is the author of twenty-seven novels and three collections of short fiction.

His first novel to attract serious public attention was Hardwired (1986), described by Roger Zelazny as "a tough, sleek juggernaut of a story, punctuated by strobe-light movements, coursing to the wail of jets and the twang of steel guitars." In 2001 he won a Nebula Award for his novelette, "Daddy's World," and won again in 2005 for "The Green Leopard Plague."

Walter's subject matter has an unusually wide range, and include the glittering surfaces of Hardwired, the opulent tapestries of Aristoi, the bleak science-tinged roman policier Days of Atonement, and the pensive young Mary Shelley of the novella "Wall, Stone, Craft," which was nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, and a World Fantasy Award.

His latest work is Deep State, a near-future thriller set in the world of alternate reality gaming.

Walter has also written for the screen and for television, and has worked in the gaming field. He was a writer for the alternate reality game Last Call Poker, and has scripted the recent mega-hit Spore.

Jack Whyte

Jack Whyte was born and raised in Scotland, and educated in England and France. He migrated to Canada from the UK, in 1967, as a teacher of High School English, but he only taught for a year before starting to work as a professional singer, musician, actor and entertainer--a career he followed, one way and another and with many variations, for the next twenty years.

In the early 1970s, Whyte researched, wrote, directed and appeared in a one man show based on the life and times of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. He toured Canada with the presentation, which he had written to appeal to non-Scots, Canadian audiences, de-mystifying the poet and his works and making them understandable and enjoyable to North Americans. The success of the show led him into writing for CBC National television, and eventually to a career in advertising, where he learned his craft as Head Writer and Creative Director of several advertising agencies before moving to the other side of the client-agency relationship, to act as Corporate Communications Director for a number of public and private companies.

Whyte's interest in 5th Century history and the 460-year Roman military occupation of Britain springs from his early Classical education in Scotland during the 1950s, and he has pursued his fascination with those times ever since. That interest, allied with an equally fervent preoccupation with the Arthurian legend, led him, in 1978, to a sudden realization of the probable truth underlying the legend's central mystery of the Sword in the Stone. Then, knowing how it had been done, Whyte set out to tell the story, and to establish King Arthur securely in a realistic and feasible historical context. His saga, fleshed out by years of research, continues to unfold to the delight of his large and growing audience. Whyte is married, with five adult children, and lives in British Columbia, Canada.