Ben Alderson is a #1 Amazon bestselling author and former BookTuber. In 2023, he was nominated for TikTok Author of the Year, and in 2024 for BookTok Breakthrough Author of the Year. A social media darling, Ben is on TikTok (153k), Instagram (65.6k followers), and Twitter (17.4k followers). He has self-published a number of M/M romantic fantasy novels, and his series A Realm of Fey is published by Angry Robot Books and A Court of Broken Bounds is published with Second Sky (Hachette UK). Ben lives in Oxfordshire and, when not writing, can be found reading, taking Winston—his Labrador—out for long walks, or obsessing over Marvel’s The Scarlet Witch.

Laura R. Samotin has a PhD in international relations and enjoys using her academic background on military tactics, power politics, and leadership to enliven and inform her creative writing. Her works of adult fiction are grounded in Jewish myth, mysticism, and her Eastern European Jewish heritage.

She served as a 2021 #DVMentor mentor and a 2021-2022 WriteMentor Summer Program mentor, and also runs the website Query101 to help authors on their writing journey. She lives with her spouse, and when she’s not researching or writing, she relishes her role as a full-time cat servant.