Storycrafting Sessions: Mastering Character Development

Bethany Baptiste grew up in Jacksonville, Florida where she thrived on southern food and stories. Now as a slightly responsible grown-up, she lives in a little brick house with her fiancé, three chaotic evil dogs, and too many books.

Bethany holds two degrees in Early Childhood Education. For the last six years she’s had the pleasure of teaching kids how easy it is to fall in love with reading and writing.

When not prying a shoe from a Schnauzer’s jaws, she writes about Black kids with big hearts and little morals. Bethany is represented by John Cusick of Folio Literary Management.

Find her online here.

Ari Augustine is a writer of speculative fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. Though she’s worn many hats in the publishing realm, her most recent include: Literary Agent Intern at TriadaUs, Poetry Reviewer at Bricolage Magazine, Editor at CraftQuest, and speaker on WriteHive 2020’s Tech-Savvy Writing panel.

She is the creator of Bookish Valhalla, a popular blog specializing in the darker genres of fiction, and has reviewed novels for top 5 publishers such as St. Martins, Wednesday Books, Random House, Macmillan, and HarperCollins. Her reviews continue to be featured on Netgalley with the following publishers: Andrews McMeel, Duke University Press, Crooked Lane Books, Charlesbridge Teen, Pushkin Press, Udon Entertainment, Blackstone Publishing, West 44 Books, Canongate, and ECW Press.

In 2021, she’s a panelist at the WriveHive Annual Conference (April 16-18, 2021) and the blog content coordinator for WriterInMotion this summer. She currently freelance edits for Draco Gaming Studio.

Ari holds a B.A of English Literature from the University of Washington and an A.S of General Sciences from CCAC.

She resides in the wilds of Tennessee with her husband and their little furry hellion, Mori-kun. Keep up with Ari online here!

Riss M. Neilson is the author of the forthcoming young-adult novel Deep in Providence. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Rhode Island College, she won the English department’s Jean Garrigue Award, which was judged by novelist, Nick White. She is from Providence and lives for the city’s art and culture scene. When she’s not writing, she’s watching anime or playing video games with her two children. 

Find out more about Riss and her many projects on LinkTree!

Lillie Lainoff is the author of One for All, and received her B.A. in English from Yale University, where she was a varsity fencer and one of the first physically disabled athletes to individually qualify for any NCAA Championship event. She has also won the 2019 LA Review Literary Award for Short Fiction, was a featured Rooted in Rights disability activist, and is the founder of Disabled Kidlit Writers on Facebook. She is currently an MA candidate in Creative Writing Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, and lives in Washington, D.C.

Find her here online!

Dan Fitzgerald is a fantasy writer living in Washington, DC with his wife, twin boys and two cats. When he is not writing, he might be gardening, doing yoga or cooking while listening to French music. His upcoming trilogy, the Maer Cycle, involves an encounter with a lost tribe of humanity ensconced in legend as monsters.

Dan can be found at danfitzwrites.com or on Twitter as @DanFitzWrites, discussing writing and fantasy worldbuilding.

Mato J. Steger is an openly out and proud Queer and Anishinaabe (North American Indigenous) fantasy and sci-fi writer, who can’t resist making everything he touches a romance. He is proudly represented by Hannah VanVels of BelCastro Literary Agency.

Diana Pomeroy (she/her/hers) is a Southern California community college professor by day and a sci-fi/fantasy author by night. She is passionate about writing own voice stories that include characters who make their own paths to success while having physical and hidden disabilities. She participates in the Spoonie Authors Network chats and the Weeknight Writers Chats on Twitter regularly, and her work has been online in various platforms, including DeviantART, for more than a decade.

Her upcoming novel, Iara’s Crossing, combines the fantastic, romantic and sci-fi in a dinosaur’s quest to understand herself and protect her kind from the forces of Nature and the forces of evil. Her year old Russian blue cat Mochi cannot confirm nor deny being her project supervisor.

H.M. Darling is a multi-genre indie author that lives and burns in Arizona. She writes new adult books in the fashion of dark fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing.

When she is not writing, you can usually find her watching Studio Ghibli movies on repeat, listening to Taylor Swift, or reading a book from her never-ending TBR list.
Her first novel, Heir of Ashes, will be released March 1, 2022.

K. J. Harrowick is a fantasy and science fiction author with a strong passion for twisted stories blending grimdark worlds and futurist technology with threads of romance and revenge. In her early years, she loved to cozy up on her library’s giant orange couches, which is where she first fell in love with SFF books.

In 2004, she began to build her own exotic worlds and create fantasy languages, toying around with ideas for characters, cultures, and magic systems. A few years later she was writing stories and stuffing them in the darkest corner under her bed where they’d never see the light of day. But her heart couldn’t stay away, and in 2014 it became a full-blown passion to write and publish her own books.

K.J. is the co-creator of Writer In Motion, Rewrite It Club, the creator of Winterviews and the 2020 Director for CampRevPit, sharing her love of community with those around her. She’s also won first prize in the #WonderPitch contest (2017), contributed to Dan Koboldt’s Science in Sci-Fi series with the article “Erroneous Code in Fiction” (November 2018), was a panelist in the Write Hive online convention (April 2020), and was a RevPit winner (May 2020).

Her debut novel Bloodflower is slotted for fall 2021 where she hopes to capture readers hearts by casting a grimdark lens on what might happen when a woman who craves peace is thrust into a world of revenge and sacrifice.

With an unhealthy obsession with dragons, tacos, cheese, and beer, K. J. also works as a freelance web developer and graphic designer on a broad range of client projects before falling down the occasional rabbit hole.  K. J. has an Associates Degree in Independent Studies.

Stephen Graham King (He/They) is a writer of space opera novels, re-imagining the classic genre and its high tech adventurers through an unabashedly queer lens. His stories have appeared in the anthologies North of Infinity II, Desolate Places and Ruins Metropolis.

His books include Chasing Cold, and the novels in his Maverick Heart series: Soul’s Blood, Gatecrasher, A Congress of Ships, and the forthcoming Ghost Light Burn, due later this year. He is also a long-term survivor of metastatic synovial sarcoma and an avid black and white street photographer. 

He can be found online, along with all his social media coordinates, here.

Steve Savage writes extensively on how people can leverage their creativity in a variety of ways.  He’s most well known for the Way With World series of Worldbuilding books, an ever-growing collection of guides to coach people on creating fictional settings.  The series is currently at seventeen books and counting.

He is also writes the Avenoth series, about the adventures and misadventures of people in a solar system of sorcery, super-science, internet-using gods, and interplanetary demons.  The first book, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet was released in 2018, with the sequel, A School Of Many Futures arriving this year.

Find him at Steve’s website or his press site. He also maintains the random tools site Seventh Sanctum.

Dianna Gunn is a freelance writer by day and a fantasy author by night. Her sword and sorcery novel, Moonshadow’s Guardian, was released in November 2018. 

When she’s not writing, Gunn can be found working to develop the indie author community. She hosts the #WeeknightWriters Twitter chat at 7PM EST and runs the Author Marketing Club.