Children and Young Adult Fiction

Laura Baumbach is the best-selling, multi-award winning, acclaimed author of short stories, novellas, novels and screenplays. Counted among her many writing awards and nominations are three EPIC Award finalists, two EPIC Award wins, one Lambda Literary Award finalist nomination, an Honorable Mention at the 2009 San Francisco Book Festival, one RWA chapter RWI award and several Reviewers' Choice Awards, Top Ten Editor & Preditor placements as well as a Semi-finalist in the Shriekfest Screenplay competition, winner of Best Telefilm in the aTalentScout Winter TV writing contest, and the Fort Bend Writers Guild Screenplay writing Contest to name just a few.

Carol Cail

Carol Cail writes adult mystery novels and children's picture books. She lives in Colorado with not one cat, dog, or hippopotamus

T A Chase

There is beauty in every kind of love, so why not live a life without boundaries? Experiencing everything the world offers fascinates me and writing about the things that make each of us unique is how I share those insights. I live in the Midwest with a wonderful partner of thirteen years. When not writing, I'm watching movies, reading and living life to the fullest.

Kira Harp

I've been writing since I could put words together. Early stories were about dolls and horses and kids who surmounted the odds and came home with a kitten. Gradually I learned about punctuation and point-of-view and my characters grew up. But real life came along, with forays into psychology and teaching and then a biomedical career and children. Writing happened in my head, for my own amusement, but didn't make it to paper.

Then several years ago, my husband gave me a computer. And my two girls were getting older and developing their own interests. So I sat down and typed out a story. Or two. Or three. Now I have adult work published, and my love of Young Adult fiction has led me to Featherweight, and the chance to share some of my YA stories.

I currently write constantly, read obsessively, and share my home with my younger teenager, my amazingly patient husband, and a crazy, omnivorous little white dog. I can be found at my author page on Goodreads, and look forward to sharing many more stories with YA readers in the future.

Karen Lee

Karen Lee has lived in one part of Western Canada or another for her entire life. She's a doting mother of three now-grown kids and has had characters and plots running around her head for as long as she can remember. Though this is her first foray into throwing her original fiction out into the web universe, she hopes to substitute her passion for writing beautiful, emotional men for her previous jobs as a hockey manager/coach, school band volunteer and overall chauffeur.

For now she lives with an overly-patient husband who totally does not get her thing for gay men, two spoiled but wonderful sons (who don't get it either), two also spoiled but beautiful cats, many phone calls with her daughter who has already left the nest, and an abundance of fabulous gay men, large and small, bouncing off the walls of her skull, competing for their turns to tell their stories.

Z. A. Maxfield

During Spring Break of the year 2007, working on the theory that most amazing things are accomplished by people who simply haven't been told they can't be done, Z.A. Maxfield informed her children it was the truest desire of her heart to become a writer. This may have been the result of boredom, or sunspot activity, or the earnest desire to function as some sort of role model for a change (as opposed to object lesson). It occurred to her that all those 'do your best' and 'try your hardest' and 'never too late' speeches would go better with a little active participation and the occasional visual aid. Since then, Ms. Maxfield has written several novels, three of which have been contracted for publication, and two prize-winning short stories. Ms. Maxfield currently lives in Southern California with her husband and four children, where she regularly and faithfully allows herself to be distracted by life, as well as any other shiny thing she happens to see.

AKM Miles loves to write. She loves characters. A good story line is great, she figures, but if you don't care anything about the characters, why would you care what happens to them? That's pretty much why and how she writes.

She loves, absolutely loves, to hear from readers. That shows that people love the characters in AKM's books and that's why she writes.

Jo Ramsey

I've been reading and writing since I was very young, and I've always enjoyed creating new worlds and stories in which someone who considers his/her life bland and boring suddenly finds everything he/she's always known turned on its ear. In other words, fantasy that starts, and often takes place completely, in the &qout;real world.&qout;. That's the type of story I enjoy reading, as well.

I wrote my first story when I was five, and completed my first book-length manuscript when I was 12. Through junior high, high school, and college, I wrote about 19 more book-length stories, all longhand. Well, I didn't have a computer back then... I put writing aside for several years after I married and had my daughters, but then got back into it about five years ago, and since then have completed the first drafts of 44 young adult manuscripts, 30 of which are part of a series, and another ten of which make up another series. My characters don't like to leave me alone.

I'm a former special education teacher who now does school visits in addition to writing. I live in Massachusetts with my two daughters, my husband, and a pair of cats.

D.H. Starr is a high energy guy with a big heart. As those of you who know him can tell, he loves to have fun and lives life with a glass-half-full attitude. While there are times his day job can feel like an EDJ (Evil Day Job for those not in the know), he truly loves the work he does with middle school students, families, and teachers.

Despite the pictures and stories to the contrary, DH is actually a homebody type of guy who prefers to spend time with family, curly up with a blanket and a great book, or have dinner parties where he can cook the meals his friends love.  Publishing through Featherweight Press, DH brings the raw emotions of first experiences and issues young people face and lays the emotions out on the page.

Harrison Turner attends middle school in a small farming community in western New York. He is an active swimmer, biker and video gamer. Writing is a hobby. His main interest leans toward short verse and poems.

DUCK ADVENTURES was written because he wanted to attend the numerous author events his writer mother did through the year. He established himself as an author with a children's book, doing his first booksigning at Lori Foster's annual Get Together in 2009. He will debut his second book, UPSTAIRS IN MY ROOM, an award winning poem written for a class assignment, at the Romantic Times Convention in Los Angeles in 2011.

Lance Zarimba is an occupational therapist working in Minneapolis, MN. His first novel was titled Vacation Therapy. He has stories in the Mayhem in the Midlands anthology, Pat Dennis' Who Died in Here? 25 mystery stories of crimes and bathrooms, Anne Fraser's Bats in the Belfry anthology, and eshort stories on Echelon Press. He is an avid book collector and enjoys all the cultural events the Twin Cities have to offer. His Therapy series, Vacation Therapy, Missing Therapy, Shock Therapy, and Family Therapy, involve an occupational therapist who solves crimes with the help but more likely the hindrances of his friends.