Books by, for, and about nerds
Piper J. Drake (or “PJ”) began her writing career as PJ Schnyder, writing sci-fi & paranormal romance and steampunk. She has recently received the FF&P PRISM award for her work as well as the NJRW Golden Leaf award and Parsec award.
Now, Piper is exploring the complexity of romantic suspense, incorporating her interests in mixed martial arts and the military into her writing.
After earning two graduate degrees, practicing law awhile, and then working for the public school system for over ten years, Delphine Dryden finally got a clue. She tossed all that aside and started doing what she should have been doing all along, writing romance novels! In hindsight she could see the decision was a no-brainer. Writing romance is the best job ever (really it’s a tie with her “day job”, which is editing).
Mazey Eddings is a neurodiverse author, dentist, and (most importantly) stage mom to her cats, Yaya and Zadie. She can most often be found reading romance novels under her weighted blanket and asking her boyfriend to bring her snacks. She’s made it her personal mission in life to destigmatize mental health issues and write love stories for every brain. With roots in Ohio and North Carolina, she now calls Philadelphia home.
Kari Edgren is the author of the Goddess Born series. In 2013, she was a RWA Golden Heart finalist. Ms. Edgren enjoys writing both historical and contemporary fiction, so long as there’s a paranormal twist. She resides on a mountain top in the Pacific Northwest where she spends a great deal of time dreaming about the sun and torturing her husband and children with strange food and random historical facts.
Vicki Essex is a romance writer based in Toronto, Canada, and has published six contemporary romance books with Harlequin Superromance. She also writes the young adult fantasy weird West series The Devil’s Revolver under the pseudonym V. S. McGrath. She enjoys sleep, salty snacks, Netflix and crocheting rectangular things. Find Vicki on her website, vickiessex.com, Twitter @VickiEssex and on Facebook at facebook.com/vickiessexauthor.
Kathy Flann’s fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, The North American Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, New Stories from the South, and other publications. A short story collection entitled Get a Grip won the George Garrett Award and was released by Texas Review Press in the fall of 2015. It was named a top book of the year by Baltimore Magazine and Baltimore City Paper. A previous collection, Smoky Ordinary, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. For five years, she taught creative writing at the University of Cumbria in England, where she created mini-courses for the BBC’s Get Writing website and served on the board of the National Association of Writers in Education. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin à Nef in France. She is an associate professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.
M.R. Fournet is a creative advocate and indie award-winning author. Her debut middle grade horror novel, Brick Dust and Bones, will release July 18, 2023 with Feiwel and Friends. She also writes adult and young adult historical and speculative fiction under the name Michelle Rene.
When not writing, she is a professional artist, belly dancer, and autism mom. She currently lives with her husband, son, and ungrateful cats in Dallas, Texas.
Phoebe Fox has been a contributor and regular columnist for a number of national, regional, and local publications, including writing about relationships for the Huffington Post, Elite Daily, and She Knows. She has been a movie, theater, and book reviewer; a screenwriter; and is a close observer of relationships in the wild. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two excellent dogs.
Avon Gale wrote her first story at the age of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special person to come along and purchase it — even if it was a bit weirder than the other, more normal hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get its happily ever after — though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites.
Avon grew up in the southern United States, and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal midwestern college town. When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together, already. Avon is always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress relieving as a good rock concert and will never say no to candy.
At one point, Avon was the mayor of both Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to know about her as a person.
Jodie Griffin didn’t always want to be a writer. She spent hours reading romance and mystery, but school assignments were written one painful word at a time. Then, one day out of the blue, she got an idea for a story that wouldn’t let her go, demanding to be put down on paper. After writing several books that will never be allowed out from under the bed, she took the leap and submitted one of her manuscripts. She hasn’t looked back since. She loves chocolate in all its various forms except ice cream, hates confrontation, and has a weird affinity for the moon. She’s also an avid photographer and goes nowhere without her camera or a notebook and pen. Her own happily-ever-after includes one incredibly supportive husband and one future heroine.