Sword & Planet

Christopher Ruocchio is the author of The Sun Eater, a space opera fantasy series, as well as the Assistant Editor at Baen Books, where he has edited several anthologies. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where he studied English Rhetoric and the Classics. Christopher has been writing since he was eight and sold his first novel, Empire of Silence, at twenty-two. To date, his books have been published in five languages.

Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, Jenna.

Tim Akers grew up in rural North Carolina, the last in a long line of Scottish bankers, newspaper editors, and tourist-trap barons. He moved to Chicago to pursue his passion for apocalyptic winters, tornadic summers, and traffic. He stayed for the hot dogs.

D.J. (“Dave”) Butler grew up in swamps, deserts, and mountains. After messing around for years with the practice of law, he finally got serious and turned to his lifelong passion of storytelling. He now writes adventure stories for readers of all ages, plays guitar, and spends as much time as he can with his family. He is the author of City of the Saints, Rock Band Fights Evil, Space Eldritch, and Crecheling from Wordfire Press, and from Baen: Witchy Eye, Witchy Winter, Witchy Kingdom, and Serpent Daughter; The Cunning Man series with coauthor Aaron Michael Ritchey; In the Palace of Shadow and Joy as well as Between Princesses and Other Jobs; Abbott in Darkness; and with M.A. Rothman, the Time Trials series.

Simon R. Green is the New York Times best-selling author of more than sixty science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels. Green sold his first book in 1988 and the very next year was commissioned to write the best-selling novelization of the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. From there he went on to write many more series of books, including Deathstalker, Nightside, Secret History, Forest Kingdom, and the Ishmael Jones mysteries. His books have sold more than 3.8 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than a dozen different languages.

T.C. McCarthy is an award-winning and critically acclaimed Southern author whose short fiction has appeared in Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas, Story Quarterly, and Nature. His debut science fiction trilogy, Germline, Exogene, and Chimera, were released in 2011 and 2012 to critical acclaim. In addition to being an author, T.C. is a PhD scientist, a Fulbright Fellow, and a Howard Hughes Biomedical Research Scholar who served as a weapons expert in the CIA during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He has neither been fired on nor fired a shot in anger, but is a recognized expert in future warfare who has been invited multiple times by USSOCOM to speak on the topic of future warfare.