Participants / Biographies
Aaron Acevedo
Aaron is a writer, artist, and game designer living in Schenectady, New York, with his wife Jeannine and their dog, cat, tarantula, and red-tailed boa.
An avid gamer for over twenty years, Aaron has been designing games professionally since 1998. Among his many credits are Shards of the Stone, Depths of Despair, Evil, Dragons, Horrors of the Wasted West, Lost Colony, Prophecies of the Dragon, Necessary Evil, Call of Cthulhu CCG, and Deadlands Relaoded.
Aaron is the Creative Director of Talisman Studios, an interactive media development studio. He is hard at work designing Halcyon 6, a science fiction campaign setting for the Savage Worlds roleplaying game.
Aaron Axelsen
Aaron recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Computer Systems from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is presently working on the UWW staff. He is an active member of the open source community, where he both contributes to current projects and offers unique, new projects.
Aaron has extensive knowledge of web programming, specializing in PHP and Perl. He works on the Technical Team at Modevia Web Services LLC, and also does some independent web design. Portfolio available at amadmax.com.
Zachary Beach
Zac is currently a Computer and Information Systems student. When not studying or in class, he puts his networking skills to use traveling the state of Michigan installing wireless networks on a FEMA grant. He got his editorial start in high school as the Editor-in-Chief of the school's newspaper. Since then, he's done freelance photography and writing for several magazines and newspapers.
Scott Bennie
Scott Bennie is a veteran game designer from British Columbia, who's been fortunate enough to have only endured a few minor earthquakes and the trailing end of Typhoon Frieda. He has contributed to the design of many computer games, including the classic Fallout for Interplay. His most recent work includes the ENnie nominated game supplements Testament, Role-Playing in the Biblical Age for Green Ronin and Villainy Amok for Hero Games.
Jason L Blair
Jason L Blair is the author of Little Fears and Wyrd is Bond. Currently, he is the Adventure Games Director for Human Head Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, where he is heading up development of the Villainy card game and the Normal, Texas roleplaying line. He is married with one daughter, two dogs, and a chinchilla.
Heather "Squish" Cornelius
Heather is an aspiring artist whose talents range from painting to illustration. While not having done any previous work for games, she is glad to be able to offer herself to this project. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with two roommates and two cats. She can be shy but passionate,and enjoys video games, roleplaying, comic books, film, art and culture. You can view some of her work at squish-art.com.
William "Supe" Edmonds
William "Supe" Edmonds and his family spent July 21-25, 2005 in the French Quarters of New Orleans on summer vacation. He asked to participate in this event once he heard it was being launched. He and his family have lived through 4 hurricanes in the Carolinas and Alabama, and a tornado that almost destroyed his home in Raleigh, NC. He has also been the recipient of donations from others, and can personally attest to "being without."
"Supe" is a college track nickname, derived from Superman, as William was a four-year letterman and nationally ranked distance runner. An insurance executive by day, he is the author of Personalized Poetry - A Collection of Emotions. This book of poetry was written and registered with the Library of Congress to support a United Way drive in Raleigh, North Carolina. William has had a passion for writing poetry for individuals since he was in elementary school, and still uses his talent blessing to help others express their emotions. He has also documented each of his three children's lives in poetry - a poem written for each of them annually. Recent works have included a 911 tribute and poems around diversity and inclusion.
Educated with a Joint French and Business B.A., William draws largely on the sentiments of French writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre (No Exit), Albert Camus (The Plague), and Andre Gide (Straight is The Gate), in expressing emotions and views.
In addition to poetry and his primary job, William owns Personalized Computing Company LLC, a web design company that specializes in creating websites for non-profits. He also leads a network of men committed to self development and community service, with recent contributions including creation of a scholarship fund for students attending The Ohio State University, and a math tutoring program to assist high school students pass the Ohio Proficiency Exam for graduation. (Info: Corporate Connections)
William adopted the Nike motto "Just Do It" and is honored to be part of an initiative that brings this to life.
Crazy Elf
Crazy Elf started up a doomsday cult online when he was 16, which he disbanded three years later due to lack of tax exemptions typically granted to religious organisations. For some reason they get awfully picky about that.
He then broke into the world of interpretive dance and arthouse theatre. He got paid, but felt dirty. In desperation he started breakdancing in poetry venues, leading him to national notoriety in fields that nobody hears or cares about. Those nobodies gave him cash to yell at people, and made sure that other people would also be inflicted with his rage in spoken word recordings.
From there he broke into the stand up comedy field, where people appreciate the fact that he doesn't do anything traditional, and often backsaults.
At one point he headbutted a brick wall for fifteen minutes a day in his relentless quest to be hardcore, until a calcium deposit formed on the peak of his skull. He now wears a hat.
He's Australian, can bench press more than you can, and looks really really impressive before people kick his arse.
Writes a bit, too.
Matt Forbeck
Matt Forbeck has worked in the adventure gaming industry for over 15 years. He has worked on collectible card games, miniatures games, roleplaying games, and board games which have been nominated for over 20 Origins Awards and won 12. He has written short fiction, comic books, and novels set in the Dungeons & Dragons, Eberron, Deadlands, Vampire, and Blood Bowl worlds. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their five kids. You can learn more about him and his work at www.forbeck.com.
Caz Granberg
Caz Granberg is a long time gamer who has recently broken into the game development side of the hobby with a handful of projects. Living in Madison with his wife and twin toddlers, he's working on living the the geek fantastic life of way too many DVD's, conventions and gaming books.
Seth Johnson
Rocketed to Earth as a small child, the work of writer and game designer Seth Johnson has appeared in books, magazines, computer games, console games, pen-and-paper games, and miniature games. He claims the Fantasy Trifecta Crown for simultaneously working in the worlds of Warcraft, Dragonlance, and Mage Knight, and is still proud of his work on the Draw character creation system for his award-nominated game SKETCH! A native of the midwest, he now lives in the Seattle area and works as the lead designer on the HeroClix line for WizKids Games. Learn more about Seth and his work at inkslinger.org.
Adam Jury
Adam Jury is a freelance graphic and web designer, best known for his work with FanPro on the Shadowrun RPG line, most notably his contributions to Shadowrun, Fourth Edition. His two-year stint at Guardians of Order included work on numerous Tri-Stat books, such as the ENnie award nominated Urban Fantasy Genrebook Dreaming Cities. Aside from design work, Adam occasionally gets dragged into writing and editing duties. His full publication list can be found at www.talkinabout.com/publication-list.
Mischa Krilov
Mischa Damon Krilov is a New Orleans native. A life-long gamer and geek, he also plays the didgeridoo. His first published roleplaying game, 1984 Prime, won the 2005 Iron Game Chef Competition. Due to Hurricane Katrina, he is curently looking for a job and has relocated to Austin, Texas.
Mur Lafferty
Mur Lafferty has contributed to more than 15 role-playing game titles, including books for Mage, WarCraft and Vampire, and four print magazines including PC Gamer and Computer Games. In her brief spare time when she's not raising her 3 year old daughter, she produces two podcasts, Geek Fu Action Grip and I Should Be Writing. She lives in Durham, NC with her husband, Jim Van Verth, their daughter, and a mutt they named after a Babylon 5 character. She proudly calls herself a geek, and is currently too tired to write a more clever bio.
Jason Mical
Jason Mical is a relative newcomer to the gaming world, but hasn't let that slow him down so far. By day, he is the Communications Manager for WizKids Inc., and by night he puts his pen to any project that happens to catch his fancy (or pays a couple of bucks.) His work has appeared in Morrigan's Jeremiah RPG, WizKids' own Crimson Skies and Pirates of the Barbary Coast, and will soon make the rounds in Lands of the Dead from Eden Studios.
He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two cats, is an avowed caffeine fiend, and watches far too many obscure horror movies for his own good. In the past, he has called such diverse cities as New York, London, and Tulsa "home," and gained real-world experience as a social worker before a lucky break in the games industry. After a couple glasses of scotch, he might admit to working for filmmaker Michael Moore, too. His first novel awaits editing, and he toils each morning on the second, a lighthearted sci-fi romp about communist invaders from Mars and the end of the world.
Veronica Pare
Veronica Pare is an artist and animator whose work frequently explores dark themes in fairytales and mythology through a variety of media. Her work has been shown in a number of art exhibitions, as well as on t-shirts, websites, and fairie wings.
After drawing her own and other party member's characters for 15 years it belatedly occurred to her to combine the two pursuits professionally as an RPG artist. She has worked on several independent games and achieved publication in White Wolf Publishing's Time of Judgment. Armed with her shiny new BFA, she has recently returned to her native New Hampshire to pursue a career as a freelance artist, animator, or really anything that allows her to make art and money. Presently, she is working on her very own graphic novel, which will be a-world wide smash hit. Really. For an update on current projects, please visit www.veronicapare.com.
Jeff Preston
Jeff Preston is a freelance illustrator in the gaming industry. Since 2003 he has been providing quality interior line art for several indy publishers and online magazines. Contrary to popular belief, he is not actually a zombie. He currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin, with his beautiful wife and a spoiled rotten black lab puppy.
Mikko Rautalahti
Unlike many of his colleagues, Mikko Rautalahti is not particularly mild-mannered by day or night. When he's not busy screaming in impotent and pointless rage or wrestling with the polar bears, penguins and Nokia employees that overpopulate his perpetually frozen and savage native land of Finland, he pretends to be a writer, journalist, editor, translator and sometime artist. He has worked on several role-playing games, including Vampire, Exalted, Nobilis and Gamma World, as well as various Finnish print magazines most people reading this are likely to be completely unaware of. His hobbies include writing crude messages on bathroom mirrors with lipstick worn by other people.
Sean Riley
Sean Riley is a mild mannered Australian librarian with a secret identity! He has written several books for the Hunter: The Reckoning and Werewolf: The Apocalypse lines for White Wolf Games Studio, including Tribebook: Glass Walker Revised, and Hammer and Klaive.
S. John Ross
S. John's been writing RPG material professionally since 1991, but he's been a cartophiliac gamer a lot longer, skipping lots of high school to walk railroad tracks, explore the woods, drink schnapps with a waitress in her trailer park, get caught by the school principal while hitchhiking, run away to the beach, invent the world's smelliest pizza while airborne, practice stage-magic and comedy, and set things on fire. When he got tired, he'd spend time curled up in a chair with a purring kitten named Sergio, drawing floorplans, villages, dungeons and cities for his fantasy games. As he got older, some of those habits changed, and in addition to creating Uresia: Grave of Heaven, he sold work to TSR, Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, Steve Jackson Games, Flying Buffalo, Last Unicorn, Avalon Hill and others before founding Cumberland Games to make the kind of stuff he'd been itching to all along. Since 1997, he's been happily married to Sandra Ross and since 1998 he and Sandra have lived in Austin, Texas. On the weekend of their move there, S. John appeared as Gaming Guest of Honor at a convention in New Orleans, and made a point of getting out of the hotel to enjoy some of it. He hasn't been back since, but looks forward to seeing the city restored to its throne as the Queen of the South.
Janice M. Sellers
Janice Sellers started working in the adventure game industry in 1990 at Chessex Manufacturing. After four years there, as the Production Manager and the entire Roleplaying Department, she realized a long-held dream and escaped to Chaosium, where she worked for three years editing and developing the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game (including the New Orleans guidebook) and fiction lines and the Pendragon fiction line. She has also edited for Crunchy Frog Enterprises, Citizen Games (d20 products), FASA, Fast Forward Entertainment, Issaries, Last Unicorn Games (all the Star Trek RPG lines), R. Talsorian Games (almost their entire line of products!), Reaper Games (CAV), Steve Jackson Games, and Vortext magazine.
Janice currently does freelance editing and indexing for Alderac Entertainment Group (7th Sea and Legends of the Five Rings RPG's), Bastion Press (d20 products), Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu RPG and fiction), Decipher (Star Trek and Lord of the Rings RPG's), Eden Studios (translating licensed French d20 products), Games Unplugged magazine, Grey Ghost Press (Terra Incognita), L2 Design Group (Streets of Stalingrad 3rd edition, The Russian Campaign), Living Room Games (d20 products), OtherWorld Creations (Forbidden Kingdoms), Sword & Sorcery Studio (Scarred Lands, Engel), and White Wolf Publishing (Vampire, Mage, Dark Ages). She has edited fourteen products (games, fiction, and a CCG) that have won Origins Awards, and has won three Origins Awards as an editor.
Janice was born in Los Angeles, California, and has lived in California, Australia, and Florida. She started gaming in 1978 with white-box Dungeons and Dragons. She has a Bachelor degree in foreign languages (French, Spanish, and Russian) from USC, which has had only a small application in the game industry, to the eternal regret of her mother.
Angi Shearstone
Angi Shearstone has a master's degree in Sequential Art and paints comics. She is currenly pursuing the insane notion of trying to make money from this odd life behavior. Technically she has accomplished this to some small degree, though she still relys on her 12+ years of professional graphic art experience to feed herself and her two cats. She looks to be credited with "Zombie Assistant" or something equally absurd in the third issue of this, due out in December 2005. Despite the implications of that credit, Angi is not actually a zombie, though she feels like one sometimes.
angishearstone.com, paintedcomics.com
Geoff Skellams
Geoff Skellams is an Australian freelance RPG author. One of the founding editors of the DEMONGROUND horror/conspiracy e-zine, he has gone on to write for Dynasty Presentations, Microsoft, Fast Forward Entertainment, Sword & Sorcery Studios and White Wolf. He's never actually been to New Orleans, but he's not about to let that stop him.
Scott Taylor
Scott Taylor has been gaming long enough to (barely) qualify for Great Old One status. His first work was published in 1992, and he has since worked for as diverse lines as Cyberpunk 2020, Mage:The Ascension, and Exalted. After taking a break to try his hand at world domination — and finding it pays even worse than game writing does — he has returned to the freelance market, with new as yet unmentionable projects appearing next year.
Adam Tinworth
By day, Adam Tinworth is a mild-mannered business journalist, working the slightly mean streets of Old London Town. By night, he lives a secret life, doing exactly what his wife tells him to do... oh, and some writing for the games industry, obviously. Adam has contributed to over 25 books across most of White Wolf's games, with particular emphasis on the Hunter: the Reckoning, Demon: the Fallen and now Werewolf: the Forsaken lines. He even manages to blog from time to time at www.adam.tinworth.name.
Ursula Vernon
Ursula Vernon was raised by wombats, but eventually released back to the suburbs in a tear-jerking scene straight out of early Disney. Since then, she has worked as a freelance illustrator, illustrating games for such companies as Guardians of Order, Heresy Games, Mongoose, Sanguine, and assorted others, as well as books and magazines. She creates a webcomic about wombats and hardly ever digs up the foundations any more.
David "Blue" Wendt
By day, David is a lead researcher for a Fortune 100 company. By night, he is the intrepid Doc Blue, two-fisted statistician. In addition to saving the world from pulp threats, Doc Blue is a happy husband, proud father of two children destined for super-genius status, and a compulsive idea generator. Over the years, he has managed to collect a Ph.D., over half a dozen role-playing credits, and a huge pile of comic books and related memorabilia.
David is thankful for the opportunity to help make Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy a reality. He is thankful to the authors, artists, and editors who have donated their valuable time. He is thankful to his friends and family who have encouraged and supported this project. And he is thankful to all who purchase the book or donate to support the victims of Katrina. Together we can help rebuild lives - and really what more can anyone ask for?
Michael Wendt
Michael has dabbled in studying for the Pastoral ministry, in theatre, and in web technology, and can't seem to make up his mind. He has completed four of eight years of a ministry training program in a Lutheran church body, been involved in nearly 25 theatre productions at various schools, and currently holds a web programming position at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. Michael is also the primary owner and Operations Director of Modevia Web Services LLC. He is happy to devote both personal and company resources to the Beyond the Storm project, and is excited to work with this talented team of authors, artists, and editors.
Stacy Wendt
Stacy S. (Niedecker) Wendt worked as a professional journalist in the Pittsburgh area for nearly a decade. As a reporter and copy editor for the North Hills News Record and the Valley News Dispatch, she also had a several-year stint as a columnist, contributing a weekly look at area history to the News Record. After a move to Columbus, Ohio, she took a brief turn in retail sales before she returned to her senses and professional training and took employment as managing editor for a large professional membership association. These days, she works from home as a staff writer to that association's monthly membership publication and mom to two beautiful, active and, of course, incredibly brilliant and endearing children.
Brooke Willeford
Brook Willeford is a Game Designer for WizKids, Inc, and has worked there for almost three years. He has served as a designer for Mage Knight, Rocketmen, and High Stakes Drifter at one time or another. Some of his short works of fiction have appeared on the Shadowrun Duels Shadowland hub, the Mage Knight Scrying Chamber, and the Mechwarrior: Age of Destruction immersive website. When Brook isn't at work, he is either playing an ever-widening number of pen-and-paper roleplaying games, spending time with his lovely wife, watching movies, or trying to find a minute to read any one of the dozens of books he has in his "to read" pile.