Baby Teeth: Bite-sized tales of terror (19 page)

Anna Caro
lives and writes in Wellington. Her novella
This Other World
was recently published in the Crossed Genres anthology
Winter Well
. Her fiction has also been published in
M-Brane SF
, the Future Fire anthology
Outlaw Bodies
, and the Crossed Genres anthology
Fat Girl in a Strange Land
. She is a co-editor of two anthologies of New Zealand speculative fiction,
A Foreign Country
and
Regeneration
, and the fundraising anthology
Tales for Canterbury
. Her website is at annacaro.org.

JC Hart
is a mother to three girls, and a writer of (mostly) speculative fiction. She has had stories published both online and in print anthologies, and as much as she loves ebooks, feels that nothing can quite replace the joy of seeing her name printed in a paper book. She co-edited
Tales for Canterbury
, an SJV-winning anthology, and you can find her online at just-cassie.com blogging about whatever takes her fancy.

Celine Murray
is an 18-year-old nerd who can't walk out of a bookstore without buying something to add to the pile-of-things-to-be-read. She published her first story at seven, following it up with more award-winning short stories which she later published as a collection in
Seven to Seventeen
(Oceanbooks). Celine speaks French and English. She enjoys walking around the streets of Paris and fangirling passionately with friends about things she has read – or arguing, when it comes down to characters. Lately she finds the flawed and inconsistent ‘bad guys' far more interesting than any hero ...

Darian Smith
lives in Auckland where he works with people who have neuromuscular disorders, and in between this he writes fantasy fiction and contemporary short stories. His work is often critiqued by his beautiful partner, who writes romance, and by his neurotic Siamese cat who doesn't so much write as sit on the keyboard. He was inspired to write this particular story as a result of talking to a friend about a childhood experience which, while creepy, was fortunately nothing like the fiction that has grown from it.

M Darusha Wehm
is the three-time Parsec Award shortlisted author of the novels
Beautiful Red
,
Self Made
,
Act of Will
and
The Beauty of Our Weapons
. Her short fiction has recently appeared in
Luna Station Quarterly
and
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
and has been featured as episodes of the
Toasted Cake
and
Escape Pod
podcasts. She is from Canada, but currently lives on her sailboat in Wellington, New Zealand after spending the past several years travelling at sea. For more information, visit darusha.ca.

Debbie Cowens
is a writer and teacher who lives on the Kapiti Coast with her husband and son. She co-authored
Mansfield with Monsters
with Matt Cowens and has published a number of short stories, including the collection
Steam Pressed Shorts
. Her garden generally is in need of weeding, but nonetheless continues to rate highly as an eatery for local caterpillars with a taste for swan plants.

Eileen Mueller
writes fantasy novels, children's picture books, short stories and flash fiction, and recently won the SpecFicNZ (Speculative Fiction of New Zealand) Going Global competition for her first novel. With a marketing and public relations background, she has written numerous press releases resulting in news articles, bringing these skills to her fiction. Eileen's blog is at eileenmuellerauthor.com. In between writing, Eileen sings in Faultline barbershop chorus, runs community tree-planting and makeover projects, and is raising four children. Her surname comes from a harmonica-playing wonder whom she met during a six year sojourn in Switzerland. Their Wellington home, nestled on the edge of the town belt, rings with the sounds of blues harp, classical piano, violin, and Swiss-German.

Ever since she was a kid,
Elizabeth Gatens
sought a way to justify her stationery addiction. A career in extreme librarianship helped, working first with prisoners and then children, but always put her on the printed side of a book. Recently, she wondered if there was even more fun to be found on the other, yet-to-be-written side. There is. Her short stories have appeared online, in
Award Winning Australian Writing 2012
, and
Regeneration: New Zealand Speculative Fiction 2
. Elizabeth is the secretary of SpecFicNZ in 2013 and can be found lurking around their website.

Grant Stone
's fiction has appeared in
Strange Horizons
,
Shimmer
,
Semaphore Magazine
,
StarShipSofa
and
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
and has twice won the Sir Julius Vogel Award. He lives in Auckland and has a very suspicious-looking tree out the back of the house.

Jake Bible
lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and two kids. He is the author the horror/military scifi series the
Apex Trilogy
(
DEAD MECH
,
The Americans
,
Metal and Ash
) available from Severed Press.
DEAD MECH
represents the invention of the Drabble Novel – a novel written entirely in 100 word sections! Also published are the collection
Bethany and the Zombie Jesus
,
Stark – An Illustrated Novella
, and the YA horror novels
Little Dead Man
and the forthcoming
Intentional Haunting
(2013). Check out Friday Night Drabble Party every week on his website jakebible.com for free 100-word micro-fiction! Free drabbles for all!

Jan Goldie
is a working writer, creating content for websites, print media, corporate communications and social media. She's hoping her first YA fantasy adventure novel
Brave and True
will be published in 2013. In the meantime she's writing a multitude of short stories and working on several picture book projects. Writing
Love Hurts
made her realise how much she'd like to have her own super powers; particularly the power to write ‘kick-arse' prose at top speeds with minimal editing. Maybe in another life!

Speculative writer
Jean Gilbert
moved from Virginia, US to New Zealand in 2005, and has since called the Waikato Valley (the Shire) her home. When not assisting in surgery, Jean spends her time writing, reading, movie-watching and enjoying the great outdoors. As an avid science fiction/fantasy buff and blogger, she is a geek, and proud of it. Jean is the coordinator for the Central Island SpecFicNZ meet-ups. Read more about Jean at jeangilbert.com.

Jenni Sands
grew up in Wellington, trying hard not to believe that her toys came alive in the night or that witches lived under the bed. Now grown up, she believes even worse things. Jenni has been published in
Enamel
,
RPGirl
and
Filament
magazines, as well as a very short story on nanoism.net and a previous collaborative book called
The Event
. She has also self-published a roleplaying game about teen supernatural romance called
The Silver Kiss of the Magical Twilight of the Full Moon
.

Lewis Morgan
is a professional storyteller who has worked in New Zealand schools for the past twenty years. He writes and tells his own stories and also teaches creative writing. When not travelling New Zealand storytelling he resides in the Waikato on his two acre farm, pursuing his twin passions of mountain biking and breeding poultry. To this day he maintains a love/hate relationship with the Alien.

Matt Cowens
is the co-author of
Mansfield with Monsters
and
Steam Pressed Shorts
, and is the artist responsible for a series of self-published comics which appeared in tiny numbers in comic shops around the country in the 1990s. Matt has collaborated with Debbie Cowens (née Giltrap) on a number of projects including card games, short films, roleplaying games and short story anthologies.

Matthew Sanborn Smith
's works have appeared at
Tor.com
,
Nature
and
Chizine
, among others. He is an occasional contributor to
StarShipSofa
and is the creator and voice of the podcast
Beware the Hairy Mango
.

When not delving into the intricacies of managing digital collections in his day job as a librarian,
Michael J Parry
wrestles with the idea of being a writer. His comfort place is science fiction and fantasy, and while horror is often closely related to those genres, it's not one he has explored much. He has a couple of novels out in ebook format which you can find out about at michaeljparry.com.

Morgan Davie
lives in Lower Hutt, NZ. He writes all sorts of things, keeps a blog at morgue.isprettyawesome.com, and is probably taller than you.

Award-winning writer
Paul Mannering
is the gleeful author of dozens of published horror stories, a long-running
Doctor Who
and podcast audio drama. His first novel,
Tankbread
, been published by Permuted Press. Paul lives with his writing widow wife and two cats in the cold hills of Karori in Wellington, where the summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

Piper Mejia
is the current president of Tauranga Writers, the longest-running writing group in New Zealand. She hosts both the Tauranga Writers webpage (taurangawriters.org.nz) and a website dedicated to help young New Zealand writers hone their craft (youngnzwriters.weebly.com). She is the co-editor of
Write Off Line
(2012) and
Beyond This Age
(2013), collections of writing by New Zealand students. Since 2009 she has written several articles for
Creative Beat
,
Sunlive News
,
Bay of Plenty Times
and the
Katikati Advertiser
about the literature movement in the Bay of Plenty. As an advocate for New Zealand writers and literature she has run The Great NZ Book Race for the last two years with the support of the New Zealand National Library, the New Zealand Book Council and New Zealand Book Month.

Sally McLennan
writes like an addict does blow. She just can't help it. The words are in her system and the buzz is irresistible. She can be found most nights, gripping her pen in a sweaty paw to write fairy stories, horror, erotica, children's stories, science fiction and YA fantasy. Previous publications include the children's picture book
Deputy Dan and the Mysterious Midnight Marauder
and she has a YA series in the process of being published. When she is not in the throes of the muse, Sally enjoys fooling around with her Clydesdale and hanging out with fellow geeks.

Jack Newhouse
is an author of science fiction, fantasy and frankenpunk based in Wellington, New Zealand. He bears a bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science and scars from driving thieves out of brothels. In his free time he builds gaming miniatures, knits, bakes, and plays table-top RPGs. The release of his first novel,
Darwin's Monster: Balaena
, in ebook format is expected to be later in 2013. Find him on twitter @Chirurgic.

Kevin Maclean
lives in Auckland, New Zealand, along with two non-feral artists and entirely too many cats. He gives his profession as ‘burned-out computer geek', but his background is broader than that implies, from bartending at Les Girls, to advising a NSW Royal Commission, to co-founding a major Auckland computer company. His short fiction has featured in
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
, the DAW anthology
Misspelled
,
Millennium Nights
, a number of Pipers Ash collections, and Julie Czerneda's
Realms of Wonder
series for Fitzhenry and Whiteside. He won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Short Story in 2004, 2005, and 2008. He has recently finished a standalone novel which he describes as ‘very strange', (which, considering he considers HP Lovecraft's work ‘normal', is somewhat worrying) and is now working on the next novel in the same worlds. This is his first short story to be written or published since 2007. Enjoy!

I
t's fair to say that this book would not have been possible without the contributions and support of dozens of people, and the editors would like to pass on a huge thanks to everyone who got involved and made
Baby Teeth
a reality.

Thanks to authors Jake Bible, Anna Caro, Debbie Cowens, Matt Cowens, Morgan Davie, Elizabeth Gatens, Jean Gilbert, Jan Goldie, JC Hart, Alan Lindsay, Kevin G Maclean, Sally McLennan, Paul Mannering, Piper Mejia, Lewis Morgan, Eileen Mueller, Celine Murray, Jack Newhouse, Michael J Parry, Alicia Ponder, Darian Smith, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Jenni Sands, Grant Stone, and M Darusha Wehm, for their stories;

To Duffy Books in Homes, for coming on board with us and giving us all something worth working towards;

Huge thanks to our sponsors, SpecFicNZ and Lambton Property Management, for giving us the financial boost we needed to get the word about the book out to as many readers as possible;

To everyone who has donated to our PledgeMe campaign and rewards, artwork and design, and to those responsible for proofing, layout, print and ebook publication and audio production: Marie Hodgkinson, Elizabeth Heritage, Chad Dick, Sandra Dusconi, Tony C Smith, Larry Santoro, Amanda Pillar, the
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
Hivemind, Stephen Minchin, Beaulah Pragg, Romilly Brown, and Chris Barnes of Dynamic Ram Audio;