Darkover^® Grand Council Meeting

Pre-register and reserve your room now!

Guest of Honour: Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, the mispronunciation of common English words, and the writing of speculative fiction.

Artist Guest of Honour: Amanda-Lee Ronayne

Amanda-Lee Ronayne - fondly known as "Luco" in convention circles - is a pixie-like artist powered mostly by mad whimsy and Diet Pepsi. Her work has been seen most commonly on Deviant Art (as Meek-o-bits) and at anime conventions, where she can be seen shyly chatting with others from behind her table in Artist's Alley. Her work is mostly in fantasy illustration, though she's been known to take a turn or two at soft-sculpture. Currently taking hiatus from her degree in animation at a local art college to deal with family matters, her interests include animated fantasy series (both hand-drawn animation and 3-D computer modeling like Avatar: the Last Airbender, Bleach, and Final Fantasy: Advent Children), reading, and computer games. And pirates, one mustn't forget the pirates... She knows they'll be back around for her sooner or later.

Special Guest: Katherine Kurtz

Besides the Deryni, Camber, King Kelson, and Heirs of Saint Camber Trilogies, a stand-alone Deryni novel, and several short story collections and miscellaneous books about the Deryni, she has written a juvenile science fiction novel, Legacy of Lehr; a World War II thriller, Lammas Night, dealing with magic worked in the summer of 1940 to keep Hitler from invading England; an alternate history of the American War for Independence called Two Crowns for America; and a modern fantasy novel set in contemporary Dublin: Saint Patrick's Gargoyle. She is currently completing the third book of the Childe Morgan Trilogy. After twenty-one years in Ireland, Ms. Kurtz now lives in a historic house in Virginia with her husband, author and professional herald Scott MacMillan, six cats, and two silly-looking dogs. Her first novel, Deryni Rising, is currently optioned and in development by Sony Entertainment for Columbia Pictures.

Musical Guests of Honour: Clam Chowder

Clam Chowder is a small musical group in Maryland, USA, which plays an eclectic collection of British and American folk songs, sea shanties, unusual songs from all sources, original material, and anything else that has opportunities for close harmony. The group has played in venues ranging from the Washington DC Folk Festival to the World Science Fiction Convention.

Other Guests

Danielle Ackley-McPhail

J-F Bibeau is an author, costumer designer and actor of French Canadian origin. His first fantasy novel, Felsic Current, enjoys a blossoming fan base. His stories are every bit as clever and explosively creative as he is.

Margaret L. Carter specializes in vampires, having been marked for life by reading Dracula at the age of twelve. In addition to her horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance fiction, she has had several books and articles published on the supernatural in literature. Her vampire novel Dark Changeling won an EPPIE Award in the Horror category in 2000.

Celia S. Friedman is a best-selling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as an accomplished costume designer. Critics have acclaimed her complex and compelling characters, richly textured worlds, and keen insight into the shadows and twists of human nature. She has published eight science fiction and fantasy novels to date, including the acclaimed Coldfire Trilogy. Her works have been translated into German, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, and Polish.

Halla. Born in Washington, DC and living in nearby Maryland all her life, Halla spent her childhood surrounded by farms being replaced by suburbs, reading avidly, and visiting museums as often as possible. She has been drawing, painting, sculpting and crafting as long as she can remember. Halla has been active in fandom and doing fannish art for over 30 years and still does it more for love than money.

Nancy Janda. A long-time resident of the East Coast art circles, Nancy is a versatile artist, playing in many different mediums as the spirit moves her. She prefers challenges to rote routine; mastery is a call to try something new. She's more likely to attempt a something new and foreign than settle for repeating the past. To date she's experimented in ink and graphite illustration and pastiche, sculpture, glass etching, gemstone carving, stained glass, fibercrafts, origami and more. If it fires her imagination, it will move her hands. Like the dragons and firelizards that she draws so well, she's attracted by the bright and shiny. She's geeky enough to be cool, smart enough to know when to tone down the geek. And she loves to teach, giving classes in various art forms at Darkovercon and other conventions for the past ten years or so. Best of all she's a good listener, too, as well as a good talker. Watch out or you could find yourself charmed by this tall gryphon of a lady.

Heather Rose Jones has published a connected series of stories about shapechangers in MZB's Sword and Sorceress anthology series, as well as a stand-alone story The Treasures of Britain which draws on the same medieval Welsh literature that provided the data for her PhD thesis. Her other professional publications are scattered eclectically across the fields of biotech, onomastics, clothing history, and linguistics. Despite ambitions to see some of her longer fiction projects in print, she is content to make a living as a discrepancy investigator in the pharmaceutical industry.

Debra Killeen is the author of the award-winning fantasy series The Myrridian Cycle. Volume 4, Priestess Awakening, was released this spring, with the final volume, Kingdom in the Balance, due out in 2011. Debra is currently at work on other writing projects including a trilogy taking place in the Myrridian universe, a paranormal mystery series, and an urban fantasy novel for middle-grade readers. She will be in the hucksters room, so stop by and say hello.

Timothy Liebe is the "Dreaded Spouse-Creature" of bestselling fantasy author Tamora Pierce, and co-author of Marvel's White Tiger comic.

Scott MacMillan (occasionally known as Mr. Katherine Kurtz) was educated at the University of Southern California and the American Film Institute. He has been a film-maker, an award-winning editor of Western fiction, a world-class black-powder shootist, a mounted police officer, a novelist, a screenwriter, a reserve army officer, a vintage car enthusiast, an expert on antique arms and armour, and an avid student of heraldry, military history, crumbling castles, chivalry, and Scottish and Irish heritage. While living in Ireland, he served as a Herald of Arms in the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, and comments regularly on the forum at www.xmarksthescot.com. Now that he and Katherine are mostly settled in their new home in Virginia, readers might look forward to the long-awaited third Nazi Vampire book in the not-too-distant future. Meanwhile, Scott is developing several film and TV projects.

Mike McPhail (http://www.mcp-concepts.com, http://www.milscifi.com) Editor of the award-winning Defending The Future series.

Alanna Morland is the author of Leopard Lord and Shackle and Sword, now sadly out of print, as well as a short story in Sword and Sorceress XXII. After living in multiple states and two foreign countries (thank you, Uncle Sam!), Alanna and her husband live in Maryland for now, near their daughters, sons-in-law, 5 grandchildren and a varying cast of family pets.

Tamora Pierce is a bestselling author of fantasy books for teenagers. Her books, known for their teenaged girl warriors and wizards, have received critical acclaim and a strong fanbase. She is now a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has written over twenty-five books.

Violette L. Reid is a writer, painter, poet, mother, avid volunteer, and native of Atlanta, Georgia. She has written over 1,200 poems (some have been published on numerous poetry sites and in poetry anthologies), and 25 short stories (one of which was made into a short film). She is author of Violette Ardor: A Volume of Poetry and The First Chronicle of Zayashariya: Out of Night. Violette is currently working on the sequel to her fantasy novel. Her newest fantasy Angel Crush, a supernatural thriller, will be released in 2011.

Don Sakers was launched the same month as Sputnik One, so it was perhaps inevitable that he should become a science fiction writer. A Navy brat by birth, he spent his childhood in such far-off lands as Japan, Scotland, Hawaii, and California. In California, rather like a latter-day Mowgli, he was raised by dogs.

Hannah Shapero is also known as "Pyracantha," a professional artist living in the Washington, DC area. She has done lots of different kinds of art, especially science fiction, fantasy, and architecture.

Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story in 1980 to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She then went on to sell short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award. She is now working on a sequel to it, in addition to her short story writing and anthology editing.

Leona Wisoker is an eclectic author who researches like a butterfly on crack. This tendency directly led to the sale of her science fantasy series, Children of the Desert, which was picked up by Mercury Retrograde Press. The first book in the series, Secrets of the Sands, was released in April 2010.

Guests of Honour

Elizabeth Bear

• 

Amanda-Lee Ronayne

• 

Katherine Kurtz

• 

Clam Chowder

• 

Links

Of course there's more to see, check out the rest of what's going on.

Other important info

Take a peek at yesteryear