Anna Smith Spark lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org.uk. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model.

Anna's favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault. She spent several years as an obsessive D&D player. She can often be spotted at sff conventions wearing very unusual shoes.

www.courtofbrokenknives.org

Michael J. Sullivan is a New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Post bestselling author, and no one is more surprised by those facts than he. When just a boy, Michael found a typewriter in the basement of a friend's house, inserted a blank piece of paper, and typed, "It was a dark and stormy night." He was just ten years old and mimicking the only writer he knew at the time: Snoopy. That spark ignited a flame, and Michael's desire to fill blank pages became a life-long obsession. As an adult, Michael spent more than ten years developing his craft by studying authors such as Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck. During that time, he wrote thirteen novels but found no interest from the publishing industry. Since insanity is repeating the same action while expecting a different result, he made the rational choice and quit, vowing never to write creatively again.

Never turned out to be too long for Michael, and after a decade, he returned to the keyboard in his forties, but with one condition: He wouldn't seek publication. Instead, he wrote a series of books that had been building in his head during his hiatus. His first reading love was fantasy, and he hoped to foster a similar reaction in his then thirteen-year-old daughter who struggled due to dyslexia. After reading the third book of this series, his wife insisted that the novels had to "get out there." When Michael refused to jump back onto the query-go-round, Robin took over the publication tasks, and she has run the business side of his writing ever since.

Currently, Michael has released seventeen novels: The Riyria Revelations (6 books in 3 two-book omnibus editions from Orbit), The Riyria Chronicles (2 books from Orbit and 2 indie-published), Legends of the First Empire (3 books from Del Rey and 3 indie-published), and a standalone science fiction thriller called Hollow World (from Tachyon Publications).

Michael is working on a new trilogy (The Rise and the Fall) coming in the summer of 2021, 2022, and 2023. The next Riyria novel, Drumindor, has been green-lighted, but no publication date has been released.

Michael is one of the few authors who has successfully published through all three routes: small press, self, and big five. Some key accomplishments of his career include:

* New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Post bestselling author

* 8 Goodreads Choice Award Nominations

* Named to io9's Most Successful Self-Published Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors

* Sold more than 2 Million English copies

* Been translated into 15 foreign language

* Spent more than 6 years on Amazon's Bestselling Fantasy Author's list

* His books have been named to more than 250 best-of or most-anticipated lists including those compiled by Library Journal, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Goodreads.com, and Audible.com

Contact Info:

* email: michael@michaelsullivan-author.com

* Twitter: @author_sullivan

* Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2063919.Michael_J_Sullivan

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.james.sullivan

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