Holiday Magick (52 page)

L.M. Graham
(“The Keeper of the Trees”)

L.M. Graham spends her days as a mild-mannered journalist, but her real passion is writing fiction. She graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma with a mass communication degree, which didn't necessarily make her any better at conversation. Today, she lives in a small town in western Oklahoma with her beta reader/partner-in-crime husband, two ridiculous Great Danes, and a pair of cats that may or may not be plotting to kill them in their sleep. She can be found at
LMGrahamwrites.blogspot.com
, or on Tumblr at
everythingsbetterwithtea.tumblr.com
.

Kate Kaynak
(“Final Draft”)

Kate Kaynak was born and raised in New Jersey, but she managed to escape. Her degree from Yale says she was a psych major, but she had WAY too much fun to have paid attention in class. After serving a five-year sentence in graduate school, she started teaching psychology around the world for the University of Maryland. While in Izmir, Turkey, she started up a conversation with a handsome stranger in an airport…and ended up marrying him. They now live in New Hampshire with their three kids, where Kaynak enjoys reading, writing, and fighting crime with her amazing superpowers.
Ganzfield.com

Kimberley Long-Ewing
(“Doll Trouble”)

Kimberley Long-Ewing was raised in Indiana where she learned to see the laws of thermodynamics in cornfields. She then moved to New Mexico for graduate school and adventuring, where she met the love of her life, explored ancient pueblo ruins, and climbed mountains. She now lives in Wisconsin where she explores the bluffs and lakes in search of unusual images to pin down in photographs. When not homeschooling her son, she collaborates with her daughter on graphic novels and with her husband on educational projects. You can follow her work at
mysticsheepstudios.com
or on Twitter (@kimlongewing).

Maria Martinez
(“My Dearest Valentine”)

Maria Martinez is a self-proclaimed word nerd from New York City. She holds a BA in Drama from Northwestern University and an MS in Publishing from NYU. Currently, Maria works as the Film Festival Operations Coordinator at the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College. She is also one of the co-founders of
GoodChoiceReading.com
, a book reviewing site (@GoodChoiceReading). Maria recently moved to Connecticut with her amazing high-school-sweetheart-turned-husband, and their two gorgeous children. This is her first published work and she would like to dedicate it to her husband, Jason—her inspiration every day, both on and off the page.

Emma Michaels
(“All Souls Day”)

Emma Michaels is the author of the ‘A Sense of Truth' and ‘Society of Feathers' series. Her goal with her latest YA novel,
Owlet
, is to give others what she did not have growing up—a strong female protagonist with asthma. While her previous aspiration was to be a lady knight, she realized that not being able to run more than a few feet might become a hindrance, so she turned to writing instead. Her day jobs include being a marketing consultant, silkscreen designer and cover artist at
EmmaMichaels.com
.

DK Mok
(“Autumn Moon”)

DK Mok is a writer based in Sydney, Australia, with a degree in Psychology and a fondness for bleeding-edge technology, hopeless causes, and cephalopods. DK's favorite fossil deposit is the Burgess Shale. Find out more about DK's other projects at
dkmok.com
.

Meredith Morgenstern
(“The Esther”)

Meredith Morgenstern only agreed to go to Hebrew School while growing up in Miami so she could collect money from family and friends at her Bat Mitzvah. Seven years later, she used that money to move, alone, unemployed and a college drop-out, to New York City. Somehow she survived. In 2006, she married a hot young Latino lawyer and these days enjoys a life of leisure as a stay-at-home mom and writer, eating bon-bons, watching trash TV, and lounging in the hot tub. Keep up with her semi-coherent ramblings on her author page (
meredithmorgenstern.blogspot.com
), via Twitter (@ AuthorMeredith), or on Facebook (
facebook.com/AuthorMeredithMorgenstern
).

Dave Porteous
(“Sprite Start”)

Dave has searched for the meaning people make of life through religious and spiritual practices earth-wide, starting at Albion College and Hartford Seminary and continuing up to the present. Trees have been major sources of powerful symbols in many wide-scale and indigenous religions, and were given lots of power and hope by the Arbor Day creators. Children were the primary creators of the first Arbor Day, and they might have had motivation and insight unknown to adults. Robert Oppenheimer's statement that “children…have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago” is too limited. Children, and those of us open to the unknown, have many more modes of perception overlooked in our hard-driving worlds today. Be alert!

Jessica Porteous
(“The Toy Makers”)

Jessica Porteous enjoys many creative and academic pursuits. In college and graduate school, she alternated between wanting to be an early childhood/elementary teacher and a researcher in human-computer interaction. She compromised and did both. In addition, she likes the varied challenges of writing and editing creative stories, academic papers, and grant proposals. Now, Jessica can usually be found at her home in Connecticut, working hard as a stay-at-home mother. In her free time, Jessica enjoys quilting and drinking herbal tea. Follow her on Twitter (@ porteousjessica).

Jennifer Allis Provost
(“Paper Hearts”)

Jennifer Allis Provost is a native New Englander who lives in a sprawling colonial along with her beautiful and precocious twins, a dog, two cats, a maroon-bellied conure, and a wonderful husband who never forgets to buy ice cream. As a child, she read anything and everything she could get her hands on, including a set of encyclopedias, but fantasy was always her favorite. She spends her days drinking vast amounts of coffee, arguing with her computer, and avoiding any and all domestic behavior. Follow her on Twitter (@parthalan) or visit her at
jenniferallisprovost.com
.