GUILDIFI CON GUESTS!
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J.J. Ackerknecht
Hey there. Gonna break with tradition and do this bit in the first-person.
I'm Justin Josiah Ackerknecht, aka JJ, aka JayAck. I love Fantasy, SciFi, Horror, and the intersections where those genres meet, as well as almost all of their little subgenre children. I've been writing for about 20 years, whether that be comics, short stories, webserials, and now, publishing to Amazon.
I've lived in America (where I'm from) as well as Asia and Europe (where I am currently). My wonderful wife works as a librarian, and we both adore books and stories of all sorts. We also have a pair of very stinky and absurd dogs that we love very much.
If you'd like to keep up with whatever I've got going on, you can check me out on Twitter @jjackerknecht or my personal website at www.jjackerknecht.com
J.S. Arquin
When J.S. Arquin was three, he would take as many books as he could carry to the nearest adult, and demand they read them all to me. When they finished, he’d fetch another stack.
Since then, he has become a classically trained actor and has lived and performed around the world in a professional career spanning decades. His studied technique with characters and facility with accents have served him well as a full-time narrator, as he has breathed life into hundreds of audiobooks and been a finalist for several industry awards. His skills have made him a listener favorite in the exciting realms of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and LitRPG. while working with some of the top selling authors and publishers in the world.
I guess you could say he’s paying all those Green Eggs and Ham forward.
Bosloe
Husband, Dad, Teacher, Artist, Writer, Gamer, General Trouble Maker and Very Sarcastic
Bosloe is a maths teacher after spending many years in the military and business sectors. He regularly tells dad jokes in lessons to continual groans of frustration from his students. He decided to switch to teaching not long before the pandemic hit, wishing to give something back to society. In his spare time, he writes and has a passion for storytelling. During this time, he creates compelling stories to captivate readers.
Born and raised in the Northwest of England, Bosloe discovered his love for fantasy and writing at a young age. He had never had the opportunity to show his skills, and it was only recently that he began his creative journey, publishing his works on various platforms for readers to enjoy.
Drawing inspiration from years of fantasy reading, gaming, and other amazing authors in the LitRPG Genre, he creates his worlds and crafts his stories.
In addition to teaching and writing, Bosloe is completing an Open University Degree.
Bosloe resides in Oxfordshire with his wife and fur babies. When not writing, he can be found walking the beast around the local area.
Jay Boyce
Jay Boyce, daughter of a librarian and wielder of words, is primarily an editor turned LitRPG writer. A crazy dreamer, she creates stories in her head all the time, and finally decided to start writing them down and sharing the love. A perpetual learner, she also works at her local university attending classes with deaf students and gleaning knowledge on any random subject she can get her hands on. She started writing again after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2018. She strives to make the world better through kindness, and showing that you can overcome whatever obstacles stand in your way.
Jay is currently writing two series. A Touch of Power is published by Mountaindale Press, which consists of Siphon, Adapt, Sense, and Insight. Lotus Lake: Rise of the Mystic Mage is indie published. Winner of the 2019 Warriors and Wizards award for best new LitRPG author, she was also nominated as a finalist for the Independent Audiobook Awards in 2020.
Jay is well known for collecting the rainbow in the form of dice, wigs, and mugs. Her hobbies, aside from reading/writing, include playing board and video games, ultimate frisbee and volleyball, and traveling the world to experience new cultures.
Jez Cajiao
Jez Cajiao was born a regular human, but over many years of trials and tribulations, he managed to survive to become...an older, uglier, and larger regular human! At a young age, Jez found that he truly disliked school, and due to that, decided to start work at the age of 11 in the family catering business.
After many years catering, Jez then traveled and worked at bars in Greece, where he, well, what happens in Greece stays in Greece.
He made a career change to welding, which he loved, but only for a short time, as he had developed welder's lung.
The pandemic of 2020 caused Jez to be furloughed, as his lung condition put him at a greater risk. During this time, he wrote every single day. With the support of his readers, he is now happily writing away in his home office full time, with the company of his wife, two children, two dogs, two cats, and the Sanddancers in South Shields.
You can find Jez on Facebook, Discord, Instagram, and TikTok, where he is always happy to chat with readers!
Steve Campbell
Steve Campbell is a Canadian Narrator who has recorded over 135 titles, totaling over a thousand finished hours of audiobooks, equal to 10,000,000 words. He won the Independent Audiobook Award in 2019 for YA (Watcher by AJ Eversley - co-narrated with Chelsea Stephens). Steve has also been interviewed for an article in the Wall Street Journal and has been on multiple podcasts and is a member of SAG-AFTRA.
Steve didn’t start out in the narration business, he previously worked at restaurants entertaining patrons and at an apiary before turning to construction, where he worked for almost 20 years, eventually founding and owning an incorporated company for 10 of those years. Once he discovered his love for narrating he was able to go full-time with audiobook narration after only 1.5 years.
Severe ADHD did not slow Steve down, he was not only an athlete in school, with achievements of being the captain of his high school basketball and volleyball teams, he was also involved in Fine Arts as the lead in many plays, including a community performance of Romeo and Juliet. He was also the high school class president and Valedictorian.
Steve was also a lead singer in a church and youth band to crowds up to 300 strong and toured eastern Canada and northeastern US for a year doing multimedia dramas and music to crowds up to 1,500 in schools, churches, community centres, and minimum and maximum prisons.
Steve is happily married to his high school sweetheart and they have two sons together. He’s a huge fan of movies and comics, and didn’t discover his love for reading until he was 20 and hasn’t looked back.
C.M. Carney
My journey to becoming the Bestselling author of ‘dorky books’ - as my sister is fond of calling them - began in the dark ages long before the internet was a thing with the original Dungeons and Dragons boxed set.
My mother bought that shiny red box for me after reading an ‘editorial’ in the local paper claiming that role playing games drove kids to worship dark forces in the sewers. I was ten, and it's probably a good thing there were no sewers on my street, otherwise, I would have delved down with my hand-crafted wooden sword and my trash can shield, ready to smite evildoers of all stripes, likely to never be heard from again.
Thankfully, my forays into the underworld never materialized, and I faced neither dragon nor goblin nor gelatinous cube. Instead, I turned my eye and my quill to writing fantastical tales.
Today, thanks to my two Bestselling LitRPG series, The Realms, which burst onto the LitRPG scene with Barrow King in February 2018, and The Quintessence, which incorporates cultivation elements and measured progression, I get to put the profession author on my tax return.
In addition to my two current series, I am in the early stages of plotting a third LitRPG series, The Essence of Power as well as a kid friendly, Arthurian superhero, action-adventure series called Knightman & Page, both of which will be coming to Kickstarter in the next few years.
Dawn Chapman
Dawn Chapman has been creating sci-fi and fantasy stories for a very long tim. Until 2005 when her life and attention turned to scripts, and she started work on The Secret King, a 13-episode Sci-Fi TV series, with a great passion for this medium.
In 2015, Dawn returned to her first love of prose where she revelled in the world of The Secret King, Letháo and First Contact, as an epic prose space journey over three generations.
This year her experience of working with others expanded. From Drama, Sci-Fi, Action, to LitRPG/Gamelit. Dawn’s built a portfolio of writing, consulting, publishing and audio proofing.
J.M. Clarke
J.M. Clarke is an author of novels, short stories and web fiction, known for Mark of the Fool, originally a web serial and now a best-selling series narrated by Travis Baldree. He also has short stories published in the anthology Book of Blades and the magazine New Edge of Sword and Sorcery.
Harmon Cooper
I'm Harmon Cooper, your friendly neighborhood genre-hopping author extraordinaire.
Originally from Austin, Texas, I spent five years adventuring through Asia before finding my way to New England. Now, thanks to a fellow author buddy's recommendation, I call sunny Portugal home, sharing my life with my talented artist wife who sometimes does covers for me and always creates the art inside my books.
Since 2015, I've handcrafted bestselling LitRPG, cultivation, post-apocalyptic, cozy fantasy, and progression fantasy stories for your digital, print, and audio consumption.
Rachel A. Cooper
Inked in darkness and bound by light, Rachel A. Cooper, writes progression fantasy, blending LitRPG and western cultivation to explore characters’ journey of power and self-discovery. As a Texan juggling family and a number of questionable ‘pets,’ she draws additional inspiration from a love of paranormal legends, travels, and neuropsychology. Fast-paced stories that weave reality and fantasy are her cup of tea. Somehow, amongst it all, hope remains a steadfast companion for herself, the characters, and her readers alike.
She co-authors with Aoife Wai/L. M. Hughes.
Ryan DeBruyn
All right. Where do I start?
Honestly, it’s strange looking back at how you got somewhere the further away from it you get.
I grew up an athlete who wanted to read sometimes more than I wanted to compete. I wanted to be on some magical battlefield fighting off evil, instead of just the ugly opponent I also wanted to beat. If anything, this environment allowed me some unique creativity when it came to competition.
It’s probably accurate to say I took sports as far as I physically and mentally could, attempting to represent Canada and compete in the Olympics. It might not have happened but that isn’t because I didn’t work hard enough to get the stats I needed.
When sports ended I went back to school and took Electrical Engineering, it was during my final year there that my passion for reading and long desire to write finally manifested. I started my first story Equalize on RoyalRoad and fell ‘ass-backward’ into the world of being an author.
Now, two years after taking writing full-time, I have three series to my name, and all of them have been best sellers. What a world we live in?!
Matt Dinniman
Matt Dinniman is the author of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Annie Ellicott
A veteran of the stage, Annie Ellicott has been performing for sold-out crowds in theater and music for 30 years. She recently dropped an album of upbeat jazz standards, Happy Talk, with pianist Scott Mcquade — available on all streaming platforms. She has been a recurring guest singer with Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, performing jazz, bebop, and comedy improv with the group across the US and Europe. Annie is also an Audie Award-nominated, and Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award-winning narrator. Since 2018 she has been a composer and lead female narrator for Soundbooth Theater, appearing in over 100 titles for the company to date. As an auteur, Annie co-created, alongside Emily Labes, the first Soundbooth Theater Original Cinematic Audio series, Space Buns, a superhero adventure about slaying both inner and outer villains. Season Two coming soon!
Maxwell Farmer
Maxwell spent his youth in Metropolis Illinois, the home of Superman.
There, the seeds of loving Fantasy and Sci-Fi blossomed. Like the man of steel, Maxwell dons an alter ego. During the day, he’s known as Dr. Farmer and treats all the local dogs and cats of their ailments.
At night however, he works hard to write captivating stories full of action and adventure in order to transport readers to new and magical worlds.
He lives in the Great White North of Wisconsin with his wife and son. Feel free to message him on his website https://www.maxwellfarmer.com/ to discuss his projects or nerdy things in general. He’d love to hear from you!
Jack Fields
Jack Fields is an Irish author, award winning playwright, and D&D enthusiast. He has worked on the development team for popular fantasy IPs in board gaming and video gaming. He lives by the seaside and writes stories, believing that there isn’t possibly enough time to meet enough people, so he must invent some himself.
Gary Furlong
I have been a narrator for almost 10 years and have narrated a little over 400 audiobooks. My throat is constantly sore from all that talking. To introduce some
drama into this bio I shall now give a hot take: The best Star Wars video game of all time....is Beat Saber!! Play that and tell me you don't feel like a Jedi!!!
My favorite dog is all dogs but I particularly enjoy a Golden Retriever and I aspire to embrace life the way they do.
I enjoy playing the guitar and talking to myself while driving.
I am looking forward to hanging out with you all!!
Robert Gagnon
Bio to come
JD Glasscock
LitRPG Author, Award-winning Filmmaker, Poet, Lyricist, Video Game Designer. Nocturne Series
Abby Goldsmith
Abby Goldsmith is the author of the epic sci-fi Torth series, which starts with Majority. She has sold short works to Escape Pod and Writer’s Digest Books, having attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. Goldsmith is a 2D and 3D game animator, has lived on all three coasts of the United States, and is married to her favorite reader.
Stuart Grosse
Stuart is a sci-fi and anime geek, who dabbles in tabletop and video gaming. He enjoys cosplaying and has gone to DragonCon annually since 2009. He's best known for his use of Villains as Protagonists, and his willingness to have the bad guys win in his serial novellas.