ArmadilloCon

Guests

Guest of Honor

Rachel Caine is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the 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). She is also the author of the bestselling Weather Warden series (Ill Wind, Heat Stroke, Chill Factor, Windfall, Firestorm, Thin Air, Gale Force, Cape Storm, Total Eclipse), as well as the Outcast Season series, set in the universe of the Weather Warden novels (Undone, Unknown).

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.

She is also a contributor to several short story collections, including My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon, and Strange Brew (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 anthology Immortal (edited by P.C. Cast), The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance (edited by Trisha Telep), and Eternal Kiss (edited by Trisha Telep).

Her previous novels include Stormriders, The Undead, Red Angel, Cold Kiss, Slow Burn, Copper Moon, Bridge of Shadows, and the hardcover mystery novel Exile, Texas. She and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Fort Worth, Texas.

Artist Guest

In spite of the sunny forecast for many years Cat Conrad hailed from Arlington – that’s Texas, not the national cemetery, although his puns can be deadly and have reportedly jeopardized his allotted nine lives. (Recent sightings suggest that he resides in Fort Worth, but close enough … wherever he's from, just pretend he’s a famous dead artist and purchase his paintings accordingly.) His background includes a degree in fine arts from the University of Science and Arts in Oklahoma. From there, Cat received an advanced education in just how far an art degree would take him … across town and into a 10-year stint with an UnFortunate 500 company … as an industrial chemist! He often wonders if there isn’t some frustrated chemist out there sweating over a drawing board and muttering, “What the hell happened to my resume?” Prolonged exposure to hazardous materials has done little to improve Cat’s humor, but it did convince him that he wasn’t making a better living through chemistry. In 1991 he moved on to greener pastures in Texas – in preference to becoming a permanent part of the "underground" movement in Oklahoma! In addition to being an award-winning painter and cunning linguist, Cat makes broad brushstrokes as a popular speaker and auctioneer, and continues to gain prominence as a fan entertainer. He has been a featured auctioneer at numerous conventions throughout the Southwest, including the legendary five and a half hour marathon auction of WorldCon 51 in San Antonio.

Editor Guest

Anne Sowards is an executive editor at Penguin Group (USA) Inc., where she primarily acquires and edits fantasy and science fiction for the Ace and Roc imprints. Some of the great authors she works with include Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Rachel Caine Anne Bishop, Ilona Andrews, Karen Chance, Jack Campbell, and Rob Thurman. When she's not reading, she listens to Chinese rap and spends way too much time playing video games. Follow her on Twitter.

Fan Guest

Elspeth Bloodgood is a writer's best friend. She just moved 4000 pounds of books from Tulsa, Oklahoma to her new home in Maryland. And she has read all of them. In fact, if you have written in the SF genre, she has probably read your book, too. She writes software requirements by day...which is a specific kind of fantasy, and yet somehow doesn't count as a professional SFWA credit. Elspeth has worked on Conestoga, the longest running literary SFF convention in Oklahoma for 13 years, most recently as long distance programming chair.

Toastmistress

Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-six books: three fantasy novels, twelve SF novels, three thrillers, four collections of short stories, one YA novel, and three books on writing fiction. She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with Beggars in Spain. The novel was based on a Nebula- and Hugo-winning novella of the same name. She won her second Hugo in 2009 in Montreal, for the novella “The Erdmann Nexus.” Kress has also won three additional Nebulas, a Sturgeon, and the 2003 John W. Campbell Award (for Probability Space). Her most recent books are a collection of short stories, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2008); a bio-thriller, Dogs (Tachyon Press, 2008); and an SF novel, Steal Across the Sky (Tor, 2009).

Kress's fiction, much of which concerns genetic engineering, has been translated into twenty languages. She often teaches writing at various venues around the country.

Urban Fantasy Special Guest

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.)

Gordon and Ilona currently reside in Portland with their two children and three dogs.

They have co-authored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and romantic urban fantasy of The Edge and working on the next volumes for both.

Steampunk Special Guest

Michael Bishop’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in nearly all the major fantasy and science fiction periodicals, including Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, Asimov’s, Interzone, Pulphouse, Amazing, Science Fiction Age, etc.). His work has also appeared in these original anthology series: Terry Carr’s Universe, Damon Knight’s Orbit, Robert Silverberg’s New Dimensions, Charles Grant’s Shadows, and Bantam’s Full Spectrum. Recently, new short fiction has been posted at Tor.com and Subterranean Online.

Bishop has also published fiction in such popular markets as Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,and Omni; in now defunct SF outlets as Galaxy, If, Cosmos, Rigel, and Shayol; and in literary quarterlies (The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, and The Chattahoochee Review). His story “Dogs’ Lives” from The Missouri Review appeared in Best American Short Stories 1985, edited by Gail Godwin and Shannon Ravenel; it has since appeared in many other anthologies, including The Literary Dog (Atlantic Monthly Press), edited by Jeanne Schinto. In addition, Bishop’s stories have been reprinted in genre best-of-the-year collections, including those edited by the late Donald Wolheim (The Annual World’s Best SF), the late Terry Carr (The Best Science Fiction of the Year), Gardner Dozois (The Year’s Best ScienceFiction), Gerald W. Page (The Year’s Best Horror Stories), Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror), the annual Nebula Award volumes, and Stephen Jones’s annual The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. His story “The Road Leads Back” recently appeared in After O’Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia from the University of Georgia Press.

Reviews, criticism, and essays by Michael Bishop have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post Book World, Libertarian Review, New York Review of Science Fiction, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Weekly, Mother Earth News, Chattahoochee Review, Locus, Science Fiction Age, the British journal Foundation, and, many times over, The New York Review of Science Fiction. Further, for over ten years, Bishop wrote a column, “Pitching Pennies Against the Starboard Bulkhead” for the semiprofessional magazine Quantum (originally Thrust).

Bishop has published poetry in The Georgia Review, The Virginia Quarterly, Moana: The Pacific Quarterly, Twilight Zone Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, TASP (The Anthology of Speculative Poetry), Shayol, Star*Line, Fantasy Macabre, Dark Regions & Horror Magazine, Orbit, and the Book-of-the-Month Club 1999 Calendar of Days, as well as in three hardcover collections: Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry edited by Steve Rasnic Tem, Burning with a Vision edited by Robert Frazier, and The Devil’s Wine edited by Tom Piccirili. A chapbook, Windows & Mirrors, appeared from the Moravian Press in 1977, and, in December 1998, Edgewood Press released Bishop’s collection Time Pieces.

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August 26-28, 2011 Renaissance Hotel Austin