The humans
behind the books.

Bill is a retired Emmy award-winning journalist with more than 40 years in the business. He has covered everything from plane crashes to multiple homicides, avalanches, and whole mountain mudslides. You name it — he’s seen it, experienced it, smelled it, and lived it.

Forty years ago, while still in school, he wrote his first novel — then called “The Beast.” In retirement, at the strong request of his wife, he rewrote it. It became Blood Mountain.

He has always had an interest in the paranormal and things we can’t yet explain. As a news anchorman he produced annual ghost story series, gathering extraordinary EVP and video evidence still shared on national programs today.

As an author, he writes about the marginalized, the forgotten, and the diverse ways humans seek meaning — bringing those beliefs together rather than apart. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Now he writes virtually every day.

Terry Persun’s books have taken readers to uncharted worlds near the edge of the galaxy (Biomass series), to lands where shape shifters battle humans (Doublesight series), and into the near future through both technology (TEN series, Neil and Mavra Sci-Fi Adventure) and shamanism (Shaman Detective series).

He’s also ventured into history with Sweet Song and Ten Months in Wonderland, contemporary crime fiction with the Fuller and Walker Mystery series, and mainstream literary fiction with Water Like Blood, Petrichor, The Perceived Darkness, and Deception Creek.

Despite his adventures into other worlds and altered states, he is said to be fairly average — though that’s not a consensus. Persun lives in Washington state with his wife, five horses, two donkeys, a dozen chickens, and several cats.

Some authors work through organized outlines, notes, and rather involved research. For Andrea Smutz, the story simply flowed out the moment she sat down at the computer. Over time she has grown into a more research-driven process — but the organic, instinctive quality of her storytelling remains at the heart of her work.

Her writing reflects the belief that the best stories come from somewhere deeper than a plot outline — from the same place her characters live before they find their way onto the page.

Knud E. Hermansen is an attorney, professional engineer, and professional land surveyor — a rare combination of legal and technical expertise that informs everything he writes.

Walking to Hell
Hard Living Easy Dying

His education includes a B.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Penn State, an M.S. in Civil Engineering with a surveying and mapping emphasis from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from West Virginia University.

Knud is a retired professor from the University of Maine, where he taught for over 30 years. He has also retired from the Marines and Army. He is the author and co-author of numerous publications spanning surveying law, land boundaries, and professional engineering practice.

Lina Patton is a writer and illustrator originally from Maine. She received her BA from Elon University and her MFA from George Mason University.

Leave the Troubled Skull Behind

Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Rupture, ELLE, and The Cut, among others.

Her debut novel, The Lake Club, will be published by William Morrow in summer 2026. She is represented by Danya Kukafka at Trellis Literary.