Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Sunset and Sawdust, Rumble Tumble and The Bottoms.

He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Edgar Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Maxim Jakubowski is a British writer and editor who has been called the king of the erotic thriller and has edited five Mammoth volumes of erotica. He lives in northwest London.

Bill Pronzini is an American writer of detective fiction.

He is also an active anthologist, having compiled more than 100 collections, most of which focus on mystery, western, and science fiction short stories.

Charles Ardai's writing has appeared in mystery magazines such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, gaming magazines such as Computer Gaming World and Electronic Games, and anthologies such as Best Mysteries of the Year and The Year's Best Horror Stories. Ardai has also edited numerous short story collections such as The Return of the Black Widowers, Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, and Futurecrime.

His first novel, Little Girl Lost, was published in 2004 and was nominated for both the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America; his second, Songs of Innocence, was called "an instant classic" by The Washington Post, selected as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, and won the Shamus Award.

Both books were written under the alias Richard Aleas and were optioned for the movies by Universal Pictures. Ardai previously received a Shamus nomination for the short story "Nobody Wins" and he received the Edgar Award in 2007 for the short story "The Home Front". In 2015, he received the Ellery Queen Award for his work on Hard Case Crime. Ardai's third novel, Fifty-to-One, was published in November 2008. It was the fiftieth book in the Hard Case Crime series and the first to be published under Ardai's real name.

In 2010, he began working as a writer and producer on the SyFy television series Haven, inspired by the Hard Case Crime novel The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. The first episode of Haven aired on July 9, 2010 and the last aired on December 17, 2015. In 2016, he wrote a novel based on the Shane Black movie The Nice Guys. In addition to his writing and publishing activities, Ardai serves as a managing director of the D. E. Shaw group.

David Quantick is an Emmy-winng television writer for such shows as Veep, The Thick of It and The Day Today.

He is the author of Sparks, The Mule, two writing manuals, How To Write Everything and How To Be A Writer.

Kim Newman is a well known and respected author and movie critic. He writes regularly for Empire Magazine and contributes to The Guardian, The Times, Time Out and others. He makes frequent appearances on radio and TV. He has won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy and British Science Fiction Awards and been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and James Herbert Awards.