Allen Steele, Writer Guest of Honor

AllenSteele.com

Allen Steele is professional science fiction writer, with fifteen novels, five collections of short fiction, and a collection of essays to his name; his work has received numerous awards, including two Hugos. A former journalist, he has worked for newspapers and magazines in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Tennessee. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation, and has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives. He and wife live in western Massachusetts.

Ron Miller, Artist Guest of Honor

Black Cat Studios

RON MILLER is an illustrator and author living in South Boston, Virginia, specializing in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction subjects. His work has appeared on scores of book jackets, book interiors and in magazines such as National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Science et Vie, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, etc. In addition to writing dozens of magazine articles and professional papers, he has had some sixty books of his own published.

These include the Hugo-nominated The Grand Tour, Cycles of Fire, In the Stream of Stars and The History of Earth. He also authored the Hugo-winning Art of Chesley Bonestell as well as a series of more than 25 highly regarded books for young adults.

Considered an authority on Jules Verne, Miller translated and illustrated a new, definitive editions of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon. The Dream Machines was nominated for the prestigious IAF Manuscript Award and won the Booklist Editor's Choice Award for 1994. Miller has also written a trilogy of fantasy novels—Palaces and Prisons, Silk and Steel and Hearts and Armor—published by Ace in 1991 and 1992, as well as a fourth volume, Mermaids and Meteors. Other novels include Bradamant and Velda.

He has been a production illustrator for motion pictures, notably Dune and Total Recall, and has done preproduction concepts, consultation and matte art for David Lynch, George Miller, John Ellis, James Cameron and UFO. He was the art director, production designer and co-author for the computer-generated showride film, Comet Impact! (SimEx, Toronto). He has taken part in numerous international space art workshops and exhibitions, including seminal sessions held in Iceland and the Soviet Union, and has lectured on space art and space history in the U.S., France, Japan, Italy and Great Britain. Miller has been on the faculty of the International Space University. His original paintings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Pushkin Museum (Moscow).

Miller is a contributing editor for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Life Member, Trustee and Fellow of the International Association for the Astronomical Arts, an Honory Member of the Sociétè Jules Verne (Paris), a Member of the North American Jules Verne Society and a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.

Return to Top

Lisa Ashton, Fan Guest of Honor

Lisa Ashton

Lisa Ashton is a Science Fiction & Fantasy and historical costumer and fan, living in Maryland. She started costuming after attending Noreascon in 1989 in Boston, having been to exactly one con prior to that. On viewing the Worldcon Masquerade, her first thought was not "How do they DO THAT?" but "Could I do that?!", a goal she set out to achieve starting immediately after.

More than 20 years later, she is still trying to design and build that perfect costume that will make people laugh, gasp and gaze in wonder. Costumes of the past few years include a Victorian and steampunk wardrobe; "Mary Gothins—Perfectly Evil,";"The Elder Days," a Snow goddess mythos in Pacific Northwest style; "Urban Legend" with beaded collar, apron and gauntlets, at Balticon 2009; "The Invasion," a reptilian alien in blue, green and yellow with a pink glowing shopping bag, at Arisia 2009; and a 5-costume group for Anticipation in 2009 called "Timeless," Egyptian gods no longer worshipped and left to perish. In addition, she completed her 5th year performing at Castle Blood, the haunted attraction in western Pennsylvania.

She also takes an active role in her local County Fair each August; besides entering items, she demonstrates various sewing and beading techniques as a docent. Of late, she has *graduated* to planning and coordinating Costume Program tracks for various East Coast cons, and is on the Committees for CC29 and CC30.

Ms. Ashton has two grown children, Tommy and Celia, and in mundane life has worked 25 years as a Physician Assistant, first in Surgery, then in Emergency Medicine (where she frequently sews her patients). In addition to the many avenues afforded by the costuming habit, other passions include beads and beading, hunting, stamp collecting, gardening and canning, and the newest: collecting authentic Victorian era photographs to study fashion history. She is the queen of flea markets and yard sales, often being able to sniff them out from miles away.

Albacon caught up with her this week for a few quick questions:

Favorite costume? "The one I 'm working on now? Sorry, can't say any more. It's a surprise"
Favorite film? "Costume epics, of course! 'Shakespeare in Love' is high on the list"
Favorite season: "Fall--both hunting and Halloween--what could be better?"
Favorite electronic device? "I have several I love, but right now it's my GPS."
Favorite con? "Albacon, of course!"

Return to Top

Kimi Alexandre—Talechasing

Writer, voice actress and podcaster, Kimi Alexandre has been on the Web since the mid-90s.

Her award-nominated podcast Tale Chasing, a show for urban fantasy readers and writers, is now in its third year. Guardians, her podcast novel about angels is currently in production. In addition to her voice-over work for the internet, radio, and award-winning author Holly Lisle, she has had guest roles in podcasts such as The Metamor City Podcast, Angel Between the Lines, The Ties That Bind, and Digital Magic. Tale Chasing was a finalist for the 2008 Parsec Award for best writing-related podcast and both Guardians and Talechasing were nominated for the 2009 Parsecs. She¹s interviewed NYTimes Bestselling Author, Scott Sigler as well as many others such as Jackie Kessler, Stacia Kane, Mark Henry, and many others. A native of Kansas, she currently resides in New Jersey and goes for more of a Dean Winchester type.

Return to Top

Inanna Arthen—By Light Unseen Media

Inanna Arthen owns and operates By Light Unseen Media, a small press dedicated to fiction and non-fiction on the theme of vampires. A fervent student of vampire folklore,/p>

media and culture since the 1960s, Inanna's non-fiction articles have been cited by countless websites and numerous scholarly books. Her contemporary fantasy series, The Vampires of New England, began with *Mortal Touch* in 2007 and continues with *The Longer the Fall,* released in June, 2010. A trained actor, speaker and artist, Inanna is a member of Broad Universe and New England Horror Writers and a contributing writer for Blogcritics.org. For more information about her activities, go to inannaarthen.com.

Return to Top

Ruth Burroughs—Carpe Libris Writers Group

D. Cameron Calkins—cameroncalkins.com

Debi Chowdhury

Byron Connell

Tina Connell

Susan Hanniford Crowley—susanhannifordcrowley.com

Susan Hanniford Crowley is an active member of SFWA, an associate editor with Space and Time Magazine , and a science fiction and fantasy author. Her most popular character being Ladyknight in "Ladyknight" from the Spells of Wonder anthology and

"Piper" in Sword and Sorceress IX . In addition, Susan is a member of RWA, CTRWA, and the Futuristic, Fantasy, and Paranormal chapter of the RWA. She is the founder of the Nights of Passion blog and is the author of the Vampires in Manhattan series. Her latest release, the 4th in the series is Vampire in the Basement. Tease Publishing LLC is also releasing her mythology romance Poseidon's Catch. She is working on a steampunk romance next as well as expanding her series. Susan will be signing her vampire romance novel The Stormy Love Life of Laura Cordelais at Albacon.

Return to Top

Elizabeth Darvill—elizabethdarvill.com/

Roberta DeCaprio—robertadecaprio.com/

Patrick Downing —iheartdoomsday.com

Patrick Downing is a filmmaker/musician from Montreal, Quebec. He grew up in Calgary, Alberta where he spent his formative adult years performing rock music with his bands A Team and the Dudes.

After being kicked out of university for paying no attention to his studies, at the prodding of his mother he attended and completed the Vancouver Film School’s foundation film program. Recording and touring and just incessantly rocking out left little time for much in the way of film creation until he finally chose to part ways (sort of) with loud guitars and moved to Montreal. There, he became the technical director of Theatre Ste. Catherines, an independent alternative venue, and found himself immersed in the dramatic universe. This led to a partnership with the theatre-owner, close-friend, and producer Eric Amber in which they threw themselves earnestly into the world of the motion picture. I Heart Doomsday (2009) is Patrick’s first dramatic feature. His second feature project will go into production in early fall 2010.

Return to Top

Ron Drummond

Born in Seattle the year everything changed, Ron Drummond has also lived in Coronado, the Green River Gorge, the high California desert very far away from anywhere else (where he caretook the land of a native American elder), a Taoist monastery in the Colorado Rockies,

on close to 100,000 miles of road via thumb and luck, and is currently living on the Hudson River a block north of the house where Herman Melville wrote Typee and Omoo. A graduate of Clarion West ¹87, Drummond has spent more time editing the work of Samuel R. Delany (fourteen books) and John Crowley (six) than anyone else alive, and as a small press publisher is nearing completion of a long-awaited new edition of Little, Big. He has excavated and arranged publication and performances of long-silent music by several Czech contemporaries of Mozart and Beethoven, and designed a World Trade Center Memorial that drew the praise of architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. Drummond¹s publications include ³The Frequency of Liberation² in Science Fiction Eye #12 and a short story published late last year in Issue 11 of the CalArts literary journal Black Clock. He hopes to live out his final years on the fourth planet from the sun.

Return to Top

Jan Dumas — aka Fibrowitch is a retired occupational safety engineer. Member of the Zombie Squad,

dedicated to teaching fen how to prepare for emergencies. She refuses to grow up, and hopes to grow old. Jan has some severe food allergies and would like to spend the weekend at Albacon instead of in a hospital. So please be careful around her. We kind of like her.

Return to Top

Judi Fennell—judifennell.com

J.A. Fludd—The Quantum Blog

Carl Frederick—Dark Zoo

Carl Frederick is theoretically, a theoretical physicist. After a post-doc at NASA and a stint at Cornell, he left astrophysics and his first love, quantum relativity theory (a strange first love, perhaps) in favor of high-tech industry.

He attended the year 2000 Odyssey Writers Workshop and subsequently took a first place in the Writers of the Future contest. He is predominately a short-story writer, having sold a couple of stories each to Baen's Universe and Asimov's, and over thirty to Analog. He fences epee, learns languages and plays the bagpipes. He lives in rural, Ithaca NY, and rural is good if you play the bagpipes. He has since returned to his aforementioned first love.

Return to Top

William Freedman—Land That I Love

Ethan Gilsdorf—ethangilsdorf.com

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winnning travel memoir/pop culture investigation "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks:

An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms." A poet, teacher and journalist for the New York Times, Boston Globe, National Geographic Traveler, he has appeared at Pax East, DragonCon, Gen Con and on radio and TV as a fantasy and gaming expert.

Return to Top

Tilly Greene—tillygreene.com

Tilly Greene was born into the easy folds of a sleepy beach town and embraces the laid back mindset she grew up with.

Later, she settled into a polar opposite lifestyle from the one she¹d been living by moving abroad to further her education. Despite the frigid climate, the fast pace existence melded in, making her a person who is adaptable and enjoys experiencing the diversity surrounding her. While traveling around the world with her husband, she researches and writes erotica and erotic romance novels in a variety of genres and sub-genres. Every day she looks forward to writing about women who are independent and confident, the men who love them, and their twisting passionate path to each other.

Return to Top

Nancy Holzner—Nancy Holzner

Heidi Hooper—heidihooper.com

Heidi Hooper is the Dryer Lint Lady -- Believe it of Not. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's sculpture department, she later studied for her master's at the University of California Long Beach and the Massachusetts College of Art.

After cancer ate most of her upper arm, she has tried to find new ways of making art and has become perhaps the nation's leading dryer lint artist. Her work has recently been purchased by Ripley's Believe It Or Not where it is showing at their museums around the world, and Heidi will be featured in their next book due out late 2010. Her work is also currently showing in galleries in Virgnia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Heidi is, along with her husband Michael A. Ventrella, one of the founders of modern LARPing and currently runs the Alliance LARP.

Return to Top

Kayleigh Jamison—kayleighjamison.net/

Cat Johnson—CatJohnson.net

An award-winning author of contemporary erotic romance in sub-genres

including military, cowboy, ménage and paranormal, Cat Johnson uses her computer so much she wore the letters off the keyboard within a year. She is known for her creative marketing and research practices. Consequently, Cat owns an entire collection of camouflage footwear for book signings and a fair number of her consultants wear combat or cowboy boots for a living. In her real life, she’s been a marketing manager, professional harpist, bartender, tour guide, radio show host, Junior League president, sponsor of a bull riding rodeo cowboy, wife and avid animal lover.
Visit the authors website at www.CatJohnson.net
Or email the author at Cat@CatJohnson.net

Return to Top

C. Margery Kempe—cmkempe.com

The author of erotic romance like CHASTITY FLAME, SPINNING GOLD and SEX CYMBALS.

K. A. Laity—kalaity.com

The author of Pelzmantel: A Medieval Tale (Immanion Press), Unikirja: Dreambook (Aino Press) and many short stories, plays, essays and scholarship. She is also a weekly columnist for BitchBuzz, the global women's lifestyle network.

Andre Lieven

Andre Lieven has been an active Canadian SF fan for a third of a century now, and enjoys attending conventions over a wide area. His interests also cover a wide area, including space history, nautical history and the history of fandom. In fact, his 300th con was Albacon two years ago.

Michael J. Martineck—michaelmartineck.com

Michael has written for DC Comics, several magazines and a novel for young readers. Cinco de Mayo, (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy ) is his first major work for

a wide, adult audience. Michael has a degree in English and Economics, but has worked in advertising, a career he credits with inspiring his newest novel. Michael lives with his wife and two children on Grand Island, NY.

Return to Top

Melissa Mead—Carpe Libris Writers Group

Stephanie Mowery

Ira Nayman—Les Pages aux Folles

KT Pinto—You don't know who KT Pinto is? How is that possible? Well, it's time we fixed that! KT Pinto

Stella Price—stellaandaudra.com

The elder of two sisters, Stella Price has been a model, ice cream designer, bartender, web wizard, retail slave and snowboard instructor.

Now in her 30's, shes the older half of Stella and Audra Price, authors of all things dark and romantic, and has over 18 books to her and her sisters credit. Aside from writing, Stella maintains a career as a graphic designer and art director for Tease Publishing. She is also the managing director for the Authors After Dark convention each year and believes happy endings dont always have to be sweetness and light.

Return to Top

Robert V.S. Redick—The Red Wolf Conspiracy

Roberta Rogow—Floating Filk

Chuck Rothman —Chuck Rothman

Chuck Rothman has been publishing science fiction for over a quarter of a century, with one novel and over 40 short stories published in places like Asimov's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Space and Time, and other markets living and dead.

D. Liza Ryun

Kathleen Scott

Ryk Spoor—The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

Jo Lynne Valerie—JoLynneValerie.com

Jo Lynne Valerie is an Award-Winning author of Paranormal Fiction and magazine columnist.

Ms. Valerie is the former editor of print publications Nature¹s Wisdom Magazine, Full Moon Rising Magazine and she was a writer for Nature¹s Wisdom Television (PBS), which she eventually co-hosted. Jo Lynne Valerie is known for the metaphysical classes she teaches both locally and online, including Numerology, Cosmology, Aromatherapy, Intuitive Development, Tarot and Shamanic Meditation.

Return to Top

Michael A. Ventrella—michaelaventrella.com

Morven Westfield—morvenwestfield.com

A vampire fan since she saw her first Hammer film, Morven is the author of two vampire novels, Darksome Thirst and The Old Power Returns.

As interested in computers as she is in vampires, she produced a monthly podcast called "Vampires, Witches, and Geeks" (on hiatus for the summer) and is the webmaster for New England Horror Writers (NEHW). She is a board member of Broad Universe, a non-profit international organization that promotes science fiction, fantasy, and horror written by women. Morven lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a pragmatist who is mildly amused by his wife's interest in things that go bump in the night.

Return to Top

Tami Winbush—Champagne Books

The Albany Fans Association Star Trek Sci-Fi Meetup Group—Albany Sci-Fi Meetup Group

We are a group of Star Trek -Scifi fans getting together to share in our enjoyment of media Scifi. We can attend conventions, do different activities,contribute to the community, socialize, learn, etc.

The Wombat

The Wombat, aka jan howard finder, has been reading SF for more than 60 years and active in SF circles for about 35.

He chaired 2 Tolkien conf., 69 and 71. After finding fandom in 72 and cons in 73, in the UK, he ran 2 SF cons, 77 and 79. In 93 he was accorded the genuine honor of being named as an Honored Guest at CONFRANCISCO, the 1993 Worldcon. He came out of retirement in 96 to chair ALBACON 96. Still brain dead, he successfully chaired SFRA 2001, an academic conf. on SF. Survived as Chair of ALBACON 08. He participates in, judged and MC's masquerades. He is one of the best auctioneers found at cons. According to backs that know, he gives the best backrubs north of the South Pole. He put out an award winning fanzine, The Spang Blah. He sold a short story in 81 to Microcosmic Tales and edited an SF anthology, Alien Encounters, in 82, and published his incredible Finder's Guide to Australterrestrials. He is a marsupial groupie. In 99 he attended A3, afterwards he drove about Oz for a total of 174 days looking for wombats. He puts out an irregular fanzine on Arthur Upfield, an Australian mystery writer. He also likes aerobics, learned to scuba, is taking up sailing, learning how to play cricket, has a budding film career, visited Middle-earth in JAN 04 and MAR 06, and trying to save the World with SUTs. Ask him about Yaminons, wombats, BYTELOCK, visiting Middle-earth and other stuff. He is a neat guy. Buy him a Pepsi!

Return to Top