Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Robert Mayer attended the City College of NY, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After a brief stint at the Washington Post, he joined the staff of Newsday. He spent ten years there, six as a reporter and four as the paper’s New York City columnist.
Jim Jones is the author of five novels set in northern New Mexico in the late 1800s: The Lights of Cimarron, The Big Empty, and the Jared Delaney series, including Rustler’s Moon, Colorado Moon and Waning Moon. His songs and books are about the West … cowboys, horses and cattle, cattle rustlers, the coming of the train … songs about people and land, rivers and mountains, the beauty of the Western sky. Jim has produced 10 Western/Folk albums and three award-winning children’s character education videos. He was the Western Music Association’s 2014 Male Performer of the Year and winner of the International Western Music Association 2019 Song of the Year, Academy of Western Artists 2016 Western Song of the Year and Western Writers of America 2013 and 2017 Spur Awards for Best Western Song.
A transplant from England to New Brunswick, Canada, via the island of Newfoundland, writer, musician, photographer and teacher Robert Rayner is the author of three adult novels, nine young adult novels, and four teen novels. His stories have been shortlisted in Canada for the Brimer Prize and (four times) for the Hackmatack Award.
Catherine Dain is the author of over a dozen mysteries. Besides the Freddie O’Neal series, twice nominated for a Shamus award by the Private Eye Writers of America, she writes a series about a New Age amateur sleuth, Mariana Morgan, and another featuring actress/detective Faith Cassidy. A professional tarot reader, Ms. Dain (well, actually Judith Garwood) lives in Ojai, California.
Caro Ramsay was born and educated in Glasgow. She has been writing stories since she was five years old, developing a keen interest in crime fiction and a passion for the genre that lead her to write Absolution, her first novel.
Brian Kelleher (Mack Maloney) has written more than 50 novels including the best-selling Wingman series and the Codename Starman military mysteries, as well as three nonfiction books, Mack Maloney’s Haunted Universe, Beyond Area 51 and UFOs in Wartime. Mack is also the host of the nationally syndicated radio show and podcast “Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files.”
Robert Bausch was born in Georgia, at the end of World War II, and was raised in the Washington, D.C., area. He has worked as a salesman—of automobiles, appliances, and hardware—a taxi driver, waiter, production planner, and library assistant. He was educated at George Mason University, earning a BA, an MA and an MFA, and he says he has been a writer all his life. He spent time in the military teaching survival, and worked his way through college.
Robert Westbrook is the author of two critically-acclaimed mystery series, including Ancient Enemy, nominated for a Shamus Award as the Best P.I. Novel of 2002, and Intimate Lies, a memoir detailing the relationship between his mother, Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham and the author F. Scott Fitzgerald, published by HarperCollins in 1995. His first novel, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, was made into an MGM movie. Robert lives with his wife, Gail, in northern New Mexico.
ROBERT J. CONLEY was a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees and the author of over forty books and the recipient of three Spur Awards.
Bret Jones is the Director of Theatre at Wichita State University, Wichita, KS. He has his M.A. in Drama and Ph.D. in Education from the University of Oklahoma. He has a novelist, screenwriter, lyricist, and playwright. His play, The Isolation House, ran at The American Theatre of Actors in NYC; Thee and Thou premiered last year at The Jewel Box Theatre in Oklahoma City and has been accepted for a run at The Buckham Alley Theatre.
