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Meet the Authors: From the Fantastic to the Galactic

Four Greater Cleveland Superheroines Share Writing Secrets

Come ask your questions, hear about their new work, and enjoy fine fiction by your new favorite local writers: J.D. Blackrose, Joelle Presby, Mary A. Turzillo, and Marie Vibbert.

About the authors:

J.D. Blackrose is the author of the Summoner’s Mark series of four books, beginning with  Demon Kissed, and is currently writing three more novels for this series. She’s published The Soul Wars, The Devil’s Been Busy, and the Zombie Cosmetologist novellas through Falstaff Books and is contracted for a new horror novel through Falstaff’s horror imprint, Falstaff Dread, for 2024. She’s published short stories in numerous speculative fiction and horror journals and anthologies. Under her legal name, she co-authored “Courageous Candles,” a Hannukah children’s story.

Joelle Presby is a former U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and a recovering corporate consultant who  grew up in West Africa. Her first reader husband works for NASA, but he has yet to build her a space elevator. She began her writing career publishing in David Weber's Honorverse and joined him as a cowriter for the Multiverse novels. After over a dozen short fiction pieces in other people's story universes, she has started a series of her very own with the novel: The Dabare Snake Launcher. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children.

After a career as a professor of English at Kent State University, Dr. Mary A. Turzillo is now a full-time writer. In 2000, her story “Mars Is No Place for Children” won SFWA’s Nebula award for best novelette. Her novel, An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, was serialized in Analog in July-November 2004. These two works have been selected as recreational reading on the International Space Station. Cosmic Cats & Fantastic Furballs is her most recent collection of short stories.

Marie Vibbert's short fiction has appeared in top magazines such as Nature, Vice, and Amazing Stories. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed for the British Science Fiction Award in 2021. Her latest novel, The Gods Awoke, is about a powerful telepathic being who thinks she's a goddess on a journey of self-discovery. A Nebula Award Finalist, Marie used to play women's professional football. By day she is a computer programmer at CWRU.

Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.