The Bushy Tales

The contributors to the Bushy Tales anthologies, a foxy lot. This collection includes the books that started it all, Tales of the Nun and Dragon.

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Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire, studied and trained in Reading and now lives in Leeds. He is known for the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series starting with Empire in Black and Gold and has now passed Book 8, The Air War. His hobbies include stage-fighting, and tabletop, live and online role-playing. More information and short stories can be found at www.shadowsoftheapt.com

Alec McQuay juggles writing with a love of Thai Boxing, weight training and cake. When he isn’t writing, Alec can be found on Facebook, either complaining about the things that have kept him from writing or talking about future occasions upon which he will be writing. Sometimes these occasions will come to pass and sometimes not, but that’s just the sort of sexy maverick he is.

Andrew Reid is a writer obsessed with the fantastic and the adventurous. Born in Scotland, he lives in Yorkshire where he is working on his first novel. You can find him on Twitter as @mygoditsraining, where he will be overjoyed by any mention of movies from the eighties or nineties.

Bolt-01 is half of the editorial team behind the critically acclaimed comics FutureQuake, Something Wicked and the 2000 AD Fanzines Zarjaz & Dogbreath. www.futurequake.co.uk

Cat Connor is a New Zealand author of international thrillers or if you prefer, international woman of mystery. Her first novel, killerbyte, was a finalist in the 2010 EPIC awards. An anthology she was delighted to be included in, ‘Tales for Canterbury’, won the prestigious Sir Julius Vogel award for Best Collected works, 2012. Cat is published by Rebel ePublishers, and has four novels available – killerbyte, terrorbyte, exacerbyte, and flashbyte. Killerbyte is currently being produced as a talking book for the Blind via the Royal New Zealand Blind Foundation. Her days are spent writing amidst the general chaos of children and with her retired racing greyhound – Romeo, keeping her company.
Visit her website: http://catconnor.wordpress.com/

Catherine Rogers grew up in West Wales and has always loved storytelling. She has collected thousands of stories both in print and in her head. Her first story on paper is being published later this year in a collection called Overheard by Salt . Overheard is edited by Jonathan Taylor and features
many wonderful stories including those from Robert Shearman, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan.

Chloë Yates currently lives in the middle of Switzerland with her bearded paramour, Mr Y, and their disapproving dog, Miss Maudie. Surrounded by books, effigies of owls, and the great god Ganesh, she contemplates many philosophical questions, including how on earth they fit rugby players into such small shorts. She has been published in the Fox Spirit Books’ (www.foxspirit.co.uk) anthologies Weird Noir (2012) Noir Carnival (2013) and Piracy (2013) and has several more stories coming out in the next year. You can find her online at www.chloeyates.com and she wanders erratically through Twitter under the sobriquet @shloobee

Colin F. Barnes is a writer (and publisher with Anachron Press) of dark and daring fiction. He takes his influence from everyday life, and the weird happenings that go on in the shadowy locales of Essex in the UK. Colin likes to blend genres and is currently working on a Cyberpunk/ Technothriller
serial ‘The Techxorcist.’ which combines elements of Sci-Fi, Thriller, and Horror. Website: www.colinfbarnes.com/books/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ColinFBarnes

Francesca Terminiello lives in Surrey with her family and a growing collection of swords. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her debut novel, a dark and bloody fantasy noir co-written with David Murray. She spends her spare time contributing to several blogs, as well as practicing and researching Historical European Martial Arts, in particular 16th Century Bolognese swordsmanship and 17th Century Italian rapier.
Fran talks swords at The Girls Guide to the Apocalypse http://www.ggsapocalypse.co.uk and promotes women in Historical European Martial Arts at Esfinges http://esfinges1. wix.com/e. Her own blog can be found at http://franterminiello.wordpress.com/ where she juggles both pen and sword.

Geraldine Clark Hellery grew up surrounded by books. Saturday mornings would be spent at the book shop, while Saturday afternoons would be spent in a faraway land. Raised on a diet of Nancy Drew, Red Dwarf and pancakes, her passion for creative writing sprouted. Travelling the world fed her imagination, filling it with ideas and stories of dragons, water gods, epic battles and so much more. Every November since 2008 is devoted to National Novel Writing Month and so far Geraldine has written seven novels covering Science Fiction and Fantasy, aimed at children, young adults and adults. Now the next adventure is entering the publishing world, with her contribution to ‘The Nun and Dragon’ being her first published work. Geraldine is helping prepare women for the end of the world with a number of articles published on ‘The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse’ including a very important article about shoes as well as how to survive if you’re turned into an animal. Geraldine currently lives in the UK with an orchid who has triffid aspirations, a magic teapot, a travelling dog called Mrf and a very patient husband.

Haralambi Markov is a writer, reviewer, columnist and as of recently an editor. Generally off-kilter, but most pleasant, you can find Markov sitting somewhere with fingers on some sort of keyboard. Markov has completed his Masters in Advertising and Media Communications and has transitioned from working as an SEO expert to working as a freelance content writer and marketer. You can find him on  Twitter @HaralambiMarkov or and his blog The Alternative Typewriter: http://haralambimarkov.com/blog/

James Bennett is, in fact, a changeling. A few days following his birth, the fair folk snatched him out of his crib and left an acorn in his place. The acorn grew up into a somewhat mischievous character, prone to dancing in woodland groves, playing the occasional prank and writing highly unlikely – but no less true – stories, such as the one in this book. Feel free to follow his shenanigans on Twitter: @I_James_Bennett and find more tall tales via his blog: http://jamesbennett72.blogspot.co.uk

Jasper Bark finds writing author biographies and talking about himself in the third person faintly embarrassing. Telling you that he’s an award winning author of four cult novels including the highly acclaimed Way of the Barefoot Zombie, just sounds like boasting. Then he has to mention that he’s written 12 children’s books and hundreds of comics and graphic novels and he wants to just curl up. He cringes when he has to reveal that his work has been translated into five different languages and is used in schools throughout the UK to help improve literacy, or that he was awarded the This Is Horror Award for his recent anthology Dead Air. Maybe he’s too British, or maybe he just needs a good enema, but he’s glad this bio is now over.

Jay Faulkner resides in Northern Ireland with his wife, Carole, and their two boys, Mackenzie and Nathaniel. He says that while he is a writer, martial artist, sketcher, and dreamer he’s mostly just a husband and father. His work has been published widely, both online and in print anthologies, and was short-listed in the 2010 Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition. He is currently working on his first novel. Jay founded, and edits, ‘With Painted Words’ – www.withpaintedwords.com – a creative writing site with inspiration from monthly image prompts, and ‘The WiFiles’ – www.thewifiles.com – an online speculative fiction magazine, published weekly. He can also be found as a regular co-host and contributor on the Following The Nerd radio show – www.followingthenerd.com. For more information visit – www.jayfaulkner.com

Joan De La Haye writes horror and some very twisted thrillers. She invariably wakes up in the middle of the night, because she’s figured out yet another freaky way to mess with her already screwed up characters. Joan is interested in some seriously weird shit. That’s probably also one of the reasons she writes horror. Joan is deep, dark and seriously twisted and so is her writing. Joan’s novels, Horror, Shadows , her brutal crime novel
Requiem in E Sharp and her zombie novella Oasis are published through Fox Spirit. Visit her website http://joandelahaye.com/

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K.A. Laity All-purpose writer, Fulbrighter, uberskiver, medievalist, flâneuse, techno-shamanka, Broad Universe social media wrangler, History Witch, Pirate Pub Captain “Laity is a remarkable sorceress indeed,” says Elizabeth Hand. Her novel Owl Stretching (Immanion Press) arrives in September 2012 and her dark fantasy collection Unquiet Dreams (Tirgearr Publishing) took wing in October 2012.  http://www.kalaity.com

Karen Davies was born in West Yorkshire. She has a degree in literature from the Open University, and a modest comic collection. Karen share’s her life with an understanding partner, two savage children, three silly dogs, and an angry cat. She’s lived int’north of England and the Republic of China. Karen currently resides in suburban bliss in the West Midlands. She’s worked as an actor, a teacher, and a scaffolder (amongst many other things). A nerd and proud, Karen plays with dice and swords and all manner of foolish, and potentially dangerous things. The most exhilaratingly stupid thing she’s done was to fall down Yu Shan, the highest mountain in Northeast Asia. After much hilarity, Karen finally stopped falling and was led to safety by a couple of local tribesmen in exchange for some cigarettes

Margrét Helgadóttir is a Norwegian-Icelandic writer who was born and lived parts of childhood and youth in East- and West-Africa. She now lives in Oslo, Norway. Margrét started to submit fiction in English for publication in autumn 2012. Her stories have so far appeared in magazines like Luna Station Quarterly, Tuck Magazine, The Linnet’s Wings and Negative Suck, and she’s got stories in the 2013 print anthologies Impossible Spaces, Tales of the Fox & Fae and the three first volumes of the Fox Pockets from Fox Spirit Books. Her first story was one of the winners of Fox Spirit Books’ International Talk Like a Pirate Day story competition in 2012. You can find out more about Margrét on her site: http://margrethelgadottir.wordpress.com

Mark West has been publishing in the small press since 1999 and has had over sixty short stories appear, two novels and a collection. Two novellas are forthcoming from Pendragon Press and he’s currently struggling with a novel. Mark lives in Rothwell, Northants with his wife Alison and their young son Matthew. He can be contacted through his website at www.markwest.org.uk
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Mhairi Simpson is a fantasy writer (mostly blood and inner demons) and inveterate traveller (mostly Europe and South America). An only child who grew up in boarding schools and with a background in modern languages and paper pushing, Mhairi has spent most of her life with words on a page, leading her to realise her best shot at faking sanity is to be a full time author/editor. http://mhairisimpson.com/

Pat Kelleher lives in Penury, Greater Manchester, with his wife and step-daughter. He has spent most of his time writing for a wide variety of TV licensed characters across a bewildering array of media. He has several non-fiction books to his credit and writes educational strips and stories for the RSPB Youth magazines. His BSFA nominated sci-fi pulp adventure series, No Man’s World is published by Abaddon Books. You can find out more at http://nomansworldblog.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://twitter.com/PennineFusilier  Amidst all this, he has somehow managed to avoid all those careers and part-time jobs that look so good on a dust jacket. You can, however, find him on twitter- http://twitter.com/patkelleher

Peter Ray Allison Having the industrial backdrop of Los Angeles 2019 from Blade Runner (actually ICI Wilton near Middlesbrough) during his formative years obviously made an impression on Peter. From an early age he had a fascination with technology; and when most of his peers were following football teams, Peter was far more interested in William Gibson and the Science-Fiction genre. It was in 2006 that Peter had his first article published, which chronicled his experiences travelling to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The following year, Peter joined the Pennyblackmusic
online music magazine, where he still regularly reviews albums and interviews bands. He has written a daily blog for Dominion and currently writes for OneMetal and the Huffington Post. Peter lives in rural Derbyshire with his wife and two children. His hobbies include gaming, dragging his family to
Science-Fiction conventions, and feigning deafness so he can keep his nose in a book at dinner time. ‘The Sound of Latex’ is Peter’s first short story.

Ren Warom is a writer of the strange, dark and bizarre, not known for fitting into boxes of any description. She’s a certified pirate-nun, a slave to several cats and the official wrangler to three spawn of varying sizes. Published in a few random places and represented by the magnificent
Jennifer Udden of Donald Maass, Ren hopes to infect many bookcases with her brain drippings in the very near future. You can find Ren wittering on a blog: http://renwaromsumwelt. wordpress.com/ being vaguely annoying on twitter: @RenWarom and muddying Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ren.warom – caution is advised as a Ren is an unpredictable creature, approach bearing gifts of cake to be
assured of personal safety.

Sammy HK Smith is a full time detective in the police, part time writer and 100% geek. A massive lover of all things fantasy and science fiction, she is proud to admit that her nickname is Starbuck, she plays board based RPG’s, is an amateur archer, and has a secret yearning to try LARPing …
Snuggled away in her little cosy corner of Oxfordshire, she lives with her wonderful husband, 12 cats, 2 dogs and multiple fish, and here she pours out the overspill of her imagination and organises the letters into words: creating her characters, worlds and stories. And no, the ‘HK’ does not stand for Hunter Killer … Unless, of course you cross her: you have been warned. www.sammyhksmith.com

Sarah Cawkwell is a great believer in the adage that becoming an adult is mandatory and growing up is optional. She’s been writing stories for many years. She has had several short stories and two novels published by the Black Library; The Gildar Rift, a Space Marines Battles story and Valkia the Bloody, a Warhammer Fantasy tale. Sarah’s Occasionally Eloquent Musings can be found at http://pyroriffic.wordpress.com

Simon Bestwick is the author of the novels Tide of Souls and The Faceless, the collections A Hazy Shade Of Winter and Pictures of the Dark, and a chapbook, Angels of the Silences. His short fiction has been reprinted in The Best Horror of the Year alongside work by Stephen King and Peter
Straub, and shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He lives in Lancashire, is working on his third and fourth novels, and doesn’t get anywhere near enough sleep.

S.J. Caunt currently lives in Leicester for his sins (which are many!) and has several short stories floating around out there in book ether.
He’s currently working on the finishing touches to his first YA project, unless the end of the world gets in the way and hiccups his endeavours!

Soussherpa is a Graduate from Five Towns College, Dix Hills, Long Island, New York. A self taught artist who has been drawing as long as they can remember. Soussherpa is a musician and have dabbled in film. They write, done comic books, comic book covers, album artwork, Logo work and a little advertising work. They’ve also had their work used in short films as well as my music: www.soussherpa.com soussherpa.deviantart.com/

T F Grant is a pen-name of Stephen Godden  Stephen Godden writes speculative fiction. He reads pretty much anything. He uses the second to fuel the first. (And writes this stuff in the third, because somebody told him that he should and he didn’t like to argue.) Other than that, Steve’s just a bloke of independent penury and incidental personality. He uses the name Stephen Godden for the Fantastical end of the spectrum and the name TF Grant for the Science Fictional end of the spectrum.

V.C. Linde has been writing poetry for most of her life in a wandering variety of styles and now writes custom written poems for international customers. She has been published in the anthology Dark Currents and won the 2012 NYT Found Poetry competition.

Wayne Simmons was born in Belfast and has loitered with intent around the horror genre for some years. He penned reviews and interviews for several online zines before publication of his debut novel in 2008. His work has since been published in the UK, Austria, Germany and Spain.
Wayne currently lives with his ghoulfiend and a Jack Russell terrier called Dita. Look out for him at various  genre and tattoo cons or catch him online at: www.waynesimmons.org

Brought forth from that most holy union of the juice of Hera’s golden apples and the shimmering hair of a demigod’s nut sac, Chloë Yates’s mind sometimes takes a dark turn, but never on a rainy day. While she is a fan of both mice and Minotaurs, she could never eat a whole one… of either. You can find her work in nine of the ten Fox Pockets, as well as in various other Fox Spirit compendiums,
but you must wait with bated breath until at least next year for a whole volume of her own. In the meantime, find her on the celestial webs at www.chloeyates.com or on Twitter under the sobriquet @shloobee.

K.T. Davies has a lifetime membership of Club Nerd and plays all manner of computer/console games as well as the unplugged varieties which she sometimes reviews for SFcrowsnest. K.T. Davies also reviews books n’ stuff. As if that wasn’t enough to prove a platinum geek credit card, K.T. Davies also practices medieval martial arts (occasionally on horseback) , larps, reads comics and wargames. 

James Bennett is a British Fantasy writer. He grew up reading Greek myths (among others) and is often found sat wondering what they’re up to now. ‘Provoking Cerberus’ is one such story. If you’d like to read more in this vein, his debut Fantasy novel ‘Chasing Embers’, the inaugural part of a series, comes out from Orbit Books in September this year. James Bennett is currently travelling in Europe. Feel free to follow him on the Twitter: @wytcheboy

Nerine Dorman is a South African creative who wears an assortment of hats. They are very nice hats. One of them has a phoenix feather. Another is trimmed in dragon scales. She also tells stories and provides free entertainment daily on Twitter @nerinedorman

Jay Faulkner resides in Northern Ireland with his wife, Carole, and their two boys, Mackenzie and Nathaniel. He says that while he is a writer, martial artist, sketcher, and dreamer he’s mostly just a husband and father. His work has been published widely, both online and in print anthologies, and was short-listed in the 2010 Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition. He is currently working on his first novel. Jay founded, and edits, ‘With Painted Words’ – www.withpaintedwords.com – a creative writing site with inspiration from monthly image prompts, and ‘The WiFiles’ – www.thewifiles.com – an online speculative fiction magazine, published weekly. He can also be found as a regular co-host and contributor on the Following The Nerd radio show – www.followingthenerd.com. For more information visit – www.jayfaulkner.com

Sarah Cawkwell is a freelance author hailing originally from the South of England, but who, after not taking a left turn at Albuquerque, now finds herself in the North East. Her first sci-fi novel, ‘The Gildar Rift’ was published by the Black Library in December 2011 and her first fantasy novel ‘Valkia the Bloody’ in July 2012. She appeared in the first Fox Spirit ‘Tales of the Nun & Dragon’ with a story about a hero so inept that he makes the British Government look competent. Sarah finds talking about herself in the third person incredibly hard to manage and so generally prefers to spend her ‘free’ time reading, watching films, playing computer games and playing her music ear-bleedingly in the car.

Pat Kelleher is a freelance writer. He served his time writing a wide variety of TV licensed characters, across a bewildering array of media, has several non-fiction books to his credit, and a collection of children’s stories published by Bloomsbury. His No Man’s World series of pulp sci-fi novels is published by Abaddon Books, along with his Gods and Monsters e-novella, Drag Hunt. He also worked on Sniper Elite 3, the latest in the video game series from Rebellion and has short stories published by Tickety Boo Press and the award-winning Fox Spirit Books.

C C D Leijenaar works in publishing and occasionally writes.

Joan De La Haye writes horror and some very twisted thrillers. She invariably wakes up in the middle of the night, because she’s figured out yet another freaky way to mess with her already screwed up characters. Joan is interested in some seriously weird shit. That’s probably also one of the reasons she writes horror. Joan is deep, dark and seriously twisted and so is her writing.
You can stalk Joan on her website: https://joandelahaye.com/

Andrew Reid is a writer obsessed with the fantastic and the adventurous. Born in Scotland, he lives in Stockholm where he is working on a growing pile of SF/F novels. You can find him on Twitter as @mygoditsraining, where he will be overjoyed by any mention of movies from the eighties or nineties. 

A resident of the dark and frozen reaches of Northern England, Ben Stewart is an aspiring writer who cites the pulp greats like Howard, Lovecraft, Wagner and Burroughs as his main influences. He is an inveterate geek with a love of Japanese Kaiju movies, superhero comics and miniature wargaming, but despite this he’s somehow married with three kids. Ben has managed to get a handful of his short stories published in various anthologies though his ultimate goal of actually completing a novel-length work still eludes him.

Catherine Hill comes from Worcestershire in England. She spent much of her childhood with her head buried in books and as a teenager mice were her favourite animals; she still has various rodent-based ornaments. An interest in history and mythology, especially the ancient Mediterranean kind, led her to an Ancient History degree. A love of fantastical and impossible stories led her to most of her favourite people. It’s probably fairly clear why this particular anthology is right up her street. She lives in Birmingham with her husband, her baby and a pet rat. She rambles about things she enjoys at http://www.catherinetjhill.blogspot.com

Jan Siegel was twenty-four when pulled out of the slush pile at Faber for the prestigious Introduction series. Faber wanted her to be a ‘literary’ writer but she was keen to write popular fiction and has published in several genres, under several different names, with several major publishers (eg Hamish Hamilton, Viking Penguin, Little Brown, Century Arrow, Harper Collins). She prefers SF and fantasy realism and has won/been nominated for awards and received wide critical acclaim in all genres. Her fantasy is often bracketed with Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling and her SF has been compared to Stanislaw Lem. As Jemma Harvey, her excursions into romcom (more com than rom) led her to be picked by Heat magazine for their Top Ten Summer Reads. She also writes poetry, usually incorporated into her novels, and is currently involved in a major project to promote great poets.

TJ Everley is a large hairy creature that roams the British Midlands. There have been numerous sightings over the past three decades; Several American amateur filmmakers have attempted to capture footage of the beast, but until authenticity of these images can be confirmed, the subject remains controversial. Some disputed sightings have been attributed to bears, bigfoot, and Tim Robbins