Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Sarah Hoyt

Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal, where she thought she was a cat until the age of six. This was a logically drawn conclusion from the fact that she was the youngest – by far – in her family and that cats were the only other small creatures around.

Upon being disabused of this, she had to come up with a more realistic goal for her existence than sleeping in the big armchair by the wood stove.

Having settled upon the goal of becoming an angel, she gave up on it when she realized it involved dying first. Instead, she decided to aim for the more improbable goal of becoming a professional writer.

Currently she lives in Colorado, with her husband, two teen sons and an embarrassment of cats. Her work currently in print includes – in addition to a few dozen short stories in magazines and anthologies – two fantasy series: the Shifters series with Baen books Draw one in The Dark and the upcoming Gentleman Takes a Chance and the Magical British Empire series with Bantam Books Heart of Light, Soul of Fire, and the upcoming Heart and Soul

As Sarah D’Almeida she is the author of Prime Crime’s Musketeer Mysteries Death of A Musketeer, The Musketeer’s Seamstress, The Musketeer’s Apprentice and A Death in Gascony, as well as the upcoming Dying By The Sword.

Under the house name Laurien Gardner, she wrote the historical Plain Jane, for Berkley Jove. She’s also edited an anthology – Something Magic This Way Comes – for DAW books.

Also upcoming are an SF novel – DarkShip Thieves with Baen books – and an historical biography of Kathryn Howard, wife of Henry VIII – from Berkley Jove -- as well as Wings, a collection of her previously published short stories – from Dark Regions Press.

She's just signed contracts for another mystery series from Prime Crime -- centered around furniture refinishing and starting with Dipped Stripped, Dead -- under the pen name Elise Hyatt.

Visit her on the web at http://www.sarahahoyt.com
 
Return to Index

Shanna Swendson

Shanna Swendson escaped (well, was kicked out during a previous economic downturn) the corporate rat race in 2002 to fulfill her lifelong dream of being a novelist. That was quite a switch from writing marketing materials for high-tech and telecommunications companies, and prior to that, writing news releases for a medical center (she’s fluent in two dialects of jargon). Now she writes humorous contemporary fantasy for Ballantine Books and pop culture essays for BenBella Books. She’s the author of Enchanted, Inc., Once Upon Stilettos, Damsel Under Stress and Don’t Hex with Texas, and has contributed to Flirting With Pride and Prejudice, Welcome to Wisteria Lane, So Say We All and Serenity Found. When she’s not writing, she’s usually discussing books and television on the Internet, where she can be found expounding at great length on such topics as Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and Harry Potter. She’s a frequent guest at writing conferences and science fiction conventions, where she gets to talk about books and television and consider it “work.” For activities that have nothing to do with work, she takes ballet classes and sings in the church choir. An army brat without any particular hometown, she was born in Oklahoma, grew up in Louisiana, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Germany and now seems to have settled in Texas (until or unless she gets a better offer). She’s a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and Romance Writers of America. Visit her web site at www.shannaswendson.com.

Steve Carper

Science fiction and writing became inextricably intertwined in Steve Carper's life in 1969 when he attended the St. Louis Worldcon and then saw his article on the con published by the Rochester Times-Union newspaper. His first published work of fiction was written at the 1972 Clarion West writers workshop. A collection of his stories, Tyrannosaur Faire, appeared earlier this year from Farstream Books. His Writers' Bloc column has appeared in the SFWA Bulletin since 1999 and he will be the editor of the next edition of the SFWA Handbook.
Return to Index

Sue Francis

Sue Francis was born in Louisville, KY, but spent most of her childhood in the Silicon Valley (before it was called that). She moved back to Louisville in 1968.

She is married to Steve Francis (almost 44 years); they have 5 children, 20 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. She juggled being a mom and a wife and also volunteered for several groups during her early years. She went to work at the library when her last daughter was in her second year of college. She has volunteered for the PTA, girl scouts, band parents and many SF conventions.

At SF Cons, she has worked on 19 WorldCons in assorted positions. She has co-chaired 18 RiverCons, and one DSC, and has worked on 82 other conventions. She has also been on the WSFS Marks protection committee 1988 to present time.

She was honored to be a Fan Guest of Honor at 9 regional conventions. Awards received include Rebel Award (DSC 1992), Rubble Award (DSC 2001), the Big Heart Award (Millennium Philcon 2001), and the DUFF (2008).
Return to Index

Terence Chua

Terence was introduced to the filking scene at the 1999 Worldcon in Melbourne, gaining notoriety for his ABBA-based Cthulhu filk. Terence has since moved on from that genre, gaining embarrassing amounts of praise for his writing, but like any good monster, calls for it will continue to haunt him through a thousand filk cons, screaming.

He has been nominated for five Pegasus Awards (for excellence in filking) and was guest of honor at the 2005 British and Sanrancisco Bay Area filk conventions. Terence is also the author of a short story collection, The Nightmare Factory; (1991, Landmark Books), which, alas, is no longer in print. A long-time comic book fan, he has served twice on the fan side of the Pro/Fan Trivia Match at the San Diego Comic-Con. He started and was one of the main editors on the Doctor Who Wikiproject at Wikipedia.

Terence holds a law degree from the University of London and a Master's degree in American History from the University of Georgia, with interests in legal, cultural and military history. His thesis was on the history of parody as a defence in copyright infringement, set against the backdrop of the 1960s underground comics scene and the infamous Air Pirates case.

A supporter of the Boston Red Sox (from *before* they won in 2004, thank you!) and the English football club Arsenal, Terence lives and works in Singapore. He has a website at http://www.khaosworks.org
Return to Index

Tobias S. Buckell

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. His second novel, Ragamuffin, was a finalist for the Nebula and Prometheus awards, and his third, Sly Mongoose, comes out in August. He is currently writing Halo: The Cole Protocol, based on the popular videogame series, due out from Tor Books this Fall.
Return to Index

Tom Trumpinski

Tom Trumpinski was born in 1952, the son of a Lithuanian-immigrant war-hero farmer and a 4'10" torch singer. He was five years old when Sputnik was launched and, as a result, was hand-picked for the educational fast-track to engineering and the sciences. He was (and still is at heart) a farm boy, who grew up in the little town of Tonica, Illinois, population 750.

At 14, after watching an episode of the original Star Trek involving Klingon battle-cruisers, he invented differential calculus over the next three weeks—including a complete new symbolism, since he had formally studied neither algebra nor geometry and had to discover the axioms necessary to derive the proper results. He was crushed when he took his new discovery to his general science teacher and found that Newton and Leibniz had already done this three centuries before.

In 1970, he entered the University of Illinois College of Engineering under a program in which poor children with high ACT scores had their tuition and fees paid by the State of Illinois. While he was there, he became a techno-hippie, which he remains to this day. After college, he worked in a manufacturing plant to support his wife and new daughter, working his way up from the assembly line to the head of Quality Assurance for the factory in 8 1/2 years.

After the plant closed during the '82 recession, he became a contractor for the Department of Energy and working at the U of I and Fermilab, he ran the construction teams which built the majority of the muon detector coverage for the Collider Detector at Fermilab, which was activated in 1986 and discovered the Top Quark in 1995.

After a brief stint at the Supercollider in the Dallas area, he returned to the Champaign area and was the laboratory supervisor for the General Chemistry accelerated freshman classes until January, 2008, when he retired to become a full time author.

Hobbies include RPG tabletop and computer gaming, reading, philosophy, and being a curmudgeon. He lives with his three wives and husband in a wonderful house in Champaign. They have seven cats and a dog. He plans to dedicate the rest of his life to writing, gaming, and love.

Riding the Hell-bound Train is his first book and is available from Peregrination Press.
Return to Index

Walter Hunt

Walter H. Hunt is a speculative-fiction writer whose work has been compared to the novels of Orson Scott Card, Frank Herbert and David Weber. He has written four books in the Dark Wing series: The Dark Wing, The Dark Path, The Dark Ascent and The Dark Crusade (all published by Tor).

His college background includes a degree in history, a subject that has always fascinated him. Contained within the covers of his books are the fruits of research and discovery that have made the journey to completion almost as enjoyable as the satisfaction with the final product.

Hunt's next novel, A Song In Stone, deals with the secret music encoded in the stones of Rosslyn Chapel, and the mysteries of the Templars. He describes it as "a search for faith at the time when Gothic architecture and polyphonic music emerged."

A baseball fan and Freemason, he makes writing his full-time profession. He lives in eastern Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.
Return to Index

Alan Tegen

Alan Tegen, an active fan and SCAdian, is the founder of two different cons as well as a being an SCA noble.

Together with his wife, Penny, he started a convention in 1971 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, called Chambanacon. They ran it for seven years, moving to Colorado Springs in 1978. This convention is currently about 34 years old.

After several years in Colorado Springs they started a convention called #con, i.e., "Number" Khan, where the name changed with the year, i.e., Icon, Tucon, Threecon, etc.). They ran it for fourteen years.

In the SCA, where he has been involved for some 38 years, he is known as Duke Albert von Dreckenveldt, and his wife, Duchess Selene. He is a Knight of the SCA and a Laurel, and is primarily known as a Medeval martial arts expert, having spent much of his SCA career as a trainer in those arts. Tegen is also known for his experience as a metal worker and armorer, which he also teaches. Selene has a Laurel in the Arts and has cooked, danced, sewn, worked leather, etc., etc., etc.

In addition to spotlighting his SCA experience, Tegen will also be on a panel remembering the late Robert Asprin. Said Tegen, "I knew Robert Asprin from my early work on conventions, and he helped me and my wife found an SCA barony in Champaign by giving martial arts instruction and encouragement. He helped me formulate many of the techniques which I use to this day."
Return to Index

Ann Wilkes

Ann Wilkes' first book, Awesome Lavratt (2008, Unlimited Publishing) is a tongue-in-cheek space opera with mind control, passion and adventure -- and lots of puns. Her stories have appeared in online zines and anthologies. She lives in California's wine country with her husband, Patrick and their youngest son. She's working on two novels while still cranking out the short funny stories that characterize her writing style. Visit her website, http://www.annwilkes.com, for a full bio, her blog and links to online stories.
Return to Index