Jessica Crichton

Contrary to popular belief, Lady Jessica of House Crichton wasn't born. Rather she was brewed in a sooty cauldron long, long ago (40 years ago to be precise), by her mother the Amazon Queen.

Now, as everyone knows the primary ingredients for a proper writer are as follows: two tablespoons of moonflights and starfights; a perfume-spritz of old books and new trees; cup each of adventure, swashbuckling, whimsy, and tea; the twisty, turny topsy-turv of licorice and labyrinths; the festive, fizzy felicity of puppy licks and pixie kicks. And, over all this -- to finish her off -- just a dash of nerddom on the very tipsy-top.

But the Amazon Queen didn't see her playful faerie friends as they unscrewed the lid to her nerddom jar, and the sprinkle-dash became a pepper mountain all over her brew. The result? A supergeek armed to the teeth with writerly words and poetic purview.

Besides nerding out on books whenever inhumanly possible, Jessica moms her five fannish kids, writes about weird kids doing weirder things, watches Dr. Who and Blackadder, oh -- and literatures hard at every con she attends. (She's told she should also mention the pretty graduate degree in all that bookish stuff she earned in 2014.) Jessica also works for NerDNA with other witches -- erm, writers -- editors and literary agents to spawn the greatest bookish programming the fandom world has ever seen.