Kristin Helling
Kristin Helling enjoys stories with a journey- whether it’s a journey across the globe, a journey through space, or a journey of finding ones self.
She writes adult fiction thrillers. When she’s not killing people (fictionally, of course!), she also has a passion for children’s stories and writes them under the pen name Kristin Alis.
She received her BA in English-Writing from Park University (Parkville, MO) with an 18-hour minor in Psychology.
Kristin owns a coffee house, co-owns the publishing imprint Wordwraith Books, is married to a Photographer, and is Mama to one little boy and his hairy sibling, a collie-shepherd mix.
J. R. Frontera
J. R. Frontera’s love of science fiction and fantasy originated with her early exposure to the worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Dune. Exploring the potential and pitfalls of future or fantastical worlds is a temptation she’s just never been able to resist. She lives in rural Missouri with her husband, son, and a random assortment of four-legged friends. She writes mostly speculative fiction with a side of love story, but dabbles in a bit of everything else, from children’s stories and poetry to erotica. She has been telling stories in some form or another since she could hold a crayon and draw.
She began blogging before blogging was a word, jumped into the world of online fanfiction in 2003, and for a brief, glorious few months, wrote review articles on Burn Notice and Stargate: SG-1 for F.A.D.P.O.V. (From a Different Point of View – a website dedicated to female fans of science fiction, fantasy, and high-action fandoms) before it was discontinued.
After a few years as a Research Assistant at KUMC and co-authoring three scientific research papers on diabetes, she currently works at a small but successful medical software development company while noveling and freelance editing whenever she can find a free moment.
She co-founded the writing group known as The Wordwraiths and is co-owner of their publishing imprint Wordwraith Books. Check out her books and say hello on the blog — she’d love to meet you!
Rod A. Galindo
U.S. Army Major Rod A. Galindo arrived on Earth in the Spring of 1970. He’s been trying to stay out of trouble ever since but has now accepted it as one of the three things he does well, right behind drawing and right ahead of spelling. He annoys both his military and civilian friends alike, because he’s just that big of a geeky anomaly who fits in absolutely nowhere.
Rod’s heart is in the right place if not his brain, and he thanks the gods of biomechanics everyday that fortune favors the foolish as well as ships named Enterprise. As a fellow Army cadet once put it, “Rod shoots this way, everyone else shoots that way, but it all comes out okay in the end.”
His home is in Kansas but his heart is in deep space. Or on a tropical beach when his request for stargate travel is denied. As it usually is; “Official Business only, sir,” the Air Force Security Patrol up on Cheyenne Mountain repeats ad nauseum. Man, those guys take things so seriously!
OUR AFFILIATE AUTHORS
Chris Esch
Chris Esch moved to the United States in 1992 to attend Graceland College (now University) in Lamoni, Iowa. There, he met his wife Lisa, moved to Independence, MO, after graduation and started a family. 22 years later, the father of three girls, and an English teacher at Blue Springs South High School, Chris casually asked Ian Cahill about the new writing group he’d recently joined. As it turns out, three of the members were former students at South. “Do you think they would let me join?” Chris asked. The rest is history.
Since joining the group, he has finished a novel he started several years ago (working on it haphazardly back then, sometimes not touching it for months at a time), completed the first draft of a second novel, and started looking at the publishing world. Chris also enjoys facilitating a summer writing camp for teens through the Greater Kansas City Writing Project.
Spencer Carney
Spencer Carney is a poet, actor, and musician who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Spencer studied English Literature and Composition at the University of Missouri-Columbia for two years before receiving his bachelors in Theatre from the University of Southern California. As an affiliate author, Spencer’s debut chapbook of poetry, “A Bird Between“, opened Wordwraith Books’ poetry line, Notion. “A Bird Between” has often been showcased as spoken-word in southern California, most notably at The RiverRock Lounge, thanks to Alternative Entertainment. When not running around the city and the surrounding wilderness looking for poems, Spencer can often be seen on national television playing a high-schooler, despite being an adult, such as on ABC’s “Speechless” and “The Goldbergs”. As a classically trained vocalist and musician, some of Spencer’s poems have ended up in song form; he even has originated roles in new-works musicals in Kansas City, such as “Wild and Willful Women: The Musical” and in Los Angeles within “Comic-Con: The Musical”. Some of his greatest literary influences include: Mary Oliver, “The Little Prince”, Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales, and John Steinbeck.
Wordwraith Books 