Charles E. Gannon is the author of Compton Crook Award-winning, Nebula-nominated Fire with Fire, Trial by Fire, and Raising Caine in the Caine Riordan series. He is the coauthor with Eric Flint of 1636: The Papal Stakes and 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies in Eric Flint's best-selling Ring of Fire series. With best seller Steve White, Gannon is the coauthor of Starfire series entries Extremis, Imperative, and Oblivion. Gannon is also the author of multiple short stories. He is a member of SIGMA, the SF think-tank, which has advised various intelligence and defense agencies since the start of the millennium. A former professor, Gannon lives near Annapolis, Maryland, with his wife and children. Robert E. Waters is a science fiction and fantasy writer. Since 1994, he has worked in the computer and board gaming industry as technical writer, editor, designer, and producer. A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, his first professional fiction publication came in 2003 with the story The Assassin's Retirement Party, Weird Tales, Issue #332. Since then he has sold stories to Nth Degree, Nth Zine, Black Library Publishing (Games Workshop), Dark Quest Books, Padwolf Publishing, Mundania Press, Dragon Moon Press, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and the Grantville Gazette. Between the years of 1998-2006, he also served as an assistant editor to Weird Tales, and is still a frequent contributor to Tangent Online, a short fiction review site. Robert currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Beth, their son, Jason, and their cat, Buzz.