Don Bruns is an ad executive and a
USA Today bestselling author. As a former road musician, he performed with Ricky Nelson, the Four Seasons, Ray Charles, and others. Bruns has authored seventeen published novels and his New Orleans trilogy has been optioned for a television series. He makes his home in Southern Florida.
Andrew Child was born in Birmingham, England, in May 1968. He went to school in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, and later attended the University of Sheffield where he studied English literature and drama. After graduation, Andrew set up and ran a small independent theater company which showcased a range of original material to local, regional, and national audiences. Following a critically successful but financially challenging appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Andrew moved into the telecommunications industry as a “temporary” solution to a short-term cash crisis. Fifteen years later, after carrying out a variety of roles including several which were covered by the UK’s Official Secrets Act, Andrew became the victim/beneficiary of a widespread redundancy program. Freed once again from the straitjacket of corporate life, he took the opportunity to answer the question, what if?
Rick Bleiweiss has been a successful musician, songwriter, music producer, and record company executive. He has worked as a social activist and journalist and is currently a publishing executive. His novel Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives was selected as an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense, as well as being chosen as one of the year’s Best New Debut Mystery Novels by Publishers Weekly. Rick lives in Gig Harbor, Washington, and is at work on his next Pignon Scorbion novel. Follow him and Scorbion at RickBleiweiss.com.
Heather Graham, a USA Today bestselling author, has written more than a hundred novels. She has been awarded the Thriller Writers’ Silver Bullet Award, the Thriller Master Award, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Strand Magazine and from Romance Writers of America. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers, Horror Writers Association, RWA, and Mystery Writers of America.
Dave Bruns took advantage of the COVID pandemic to begin a second career as a writer. Thirty-six years spent working in child welfare prepared him for a walk of life as a storyteller. His clients included drug dealers, smugglers, and murderers, and his Carl Boyd series reflects that experience. Bruns lives in Toledo, Ohio, with his wife, LouAnn Frey, and an obnoxious Portuguese Water Dog named Roscoe. Rule Number Four, Bruns’s debut novel, was published in the summer of 2024.
When John Gilstrap’s first novel, Nathan’s Run, hit the market in 1996, it set the literary world on fire. Publication rights sold in twenty-three countries, the movie rights were scooped up at auction by Warner Brothers, and John changed professions. A safety engineer by training and education, he specialized in explosives and hazardous materials, and also served fifteen years in the fire and rescue service, rising to the rank of lieutenant. That “first” book was really his fourth, and that one call from an agent (after logging twenty-seven rejections) changed the trajectory of his life. Twenty books and seven movie projects later, it’s been a good run, and it’s still running. Outside of his writing life, John is a renowned safety expert with extensive knowledge of explosives, hazardous materials, and fire behavior. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
Charles Todd is a pen name used by the American authors Caroline (1934–2021) and Charles Todd, a mother-and-son writing team who write the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries and the Bess Crawford mysteries, as well as stand-alone novels. Their novel Proof of Guilt was a New York Times bestseller, and A Test of Wills was named one of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s 100 favorite mysteries of the 20th Century and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year selection. Their novels have won the Agatha Award, the Barry Award, and the Anthony Award, as well as being finalists for several other awards. Charles is continuing the series.
A third-generation military kid, fiction author C. J. Kudlacz grew up all over the USA and strives to incorporate this atypical perspective and sense of place into his characters and settings. He has worked as a bartender, a stage and voice-over actor, and has traveled the world flying jets for both military and civilian organizations—all outstanding ways to find and tell stories. A 1997 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he also has an MA from the University of Oklahoma and is a twenty-five-year Air Force veteran. He lives in Utah.
