Suzanne Vincent is the editor-in-chief of Flash Fiction Online. That’s what people think anyway. Actually, she’s really a pretty ordinary middle-aged woman packing a few extra pounds and a few more gray hairs than she’s comfortable with. As a writer, she leans toward the fantasy spectrum, though much of what she writes is difficult to classify. Slipstream? Isn’t that where we stick stories when we just can’t figure out where else they go? Suzanne’s first professional publication was right here at FFO, published before she joined the staff: “I Speak the Master’s Will,” — a story she’s still very proud of. While she doesn’t actually have time to blog anymore, she once did. You can still read her ancient posts on writing at The Slushpile Avalanche. Suzanne keeps a house full of kids (3), a husband (1), and pets (too many to number) in Utah, USA. Yes, she’s a Mormon. No, there isn’t another wife. Mormons haven’t actually practiced polygamy since the 1890s. Too bad. She’d love to have another woman around to wash dishes and do laundry.

Bruce Holland Rogers has a home base in Eugene, Oregon, the tie-dye capital of the world. He writes all types of fiction: SF, fantasy, literary, mysteries, experimental, and work that’s hard to label.

For six years, Bruce wrote a column about the spiritual and psychological challenges of full-time fiction writing for Speculations magazine. Many of those columns have been collected in a book, Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer (an alternate selection of the Writers Digest Book Club). He is a motivational speaker and trains workers and managers in creativity and practical problem solving.

He has taught creative writing at the University of Colorado and the University of Illinois. Bruce has also taught non-credit courses for the University of Colorado, Carroll College, the University of Wisconsin, and the private Flatiron Fiction Workshop. He is a member of the permanent faculty at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program, a low-residency program that stands alone and is not affiliated with a college or university. It is the first and so far only program of its kind. Currently he is teaching creative writing and literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, on a Fulbright grant.

Iris Macor lives in North Carolina in an apartment that smells like feet and other people’s food. She lives on Progresso, cigarettes, and coffee. Her favorite poet is the Earl of Rochester. She’s yet to find another poet who curses so eloquently.

Peter Fisk was born in Stockholm in 1965. He has been writing sf and fantasy since he was six and has been published in an anthology and a number of magazines in Sweden and Finland. He has a B.Sc in applied systems science and spends his working days navigating and charting the treacherous realm where business and technology meet. He’s married with three kids, a cat, a house, a big lawn, two cars, three hobbies and too little time. Once in a while, he actually manages to steal some time for himself, and this story is the result of such a theft.

T D Edge has been a street theatre performer, props maker for the Welsh Opera, sign writer, schools caretaker, soft toys salesman, professional palm-reader, trainer, and editor. He won a Cadbury’s fiction competition at age 10 but only did it for the chocolate. When that ran out, he got writing again and published several children’s/YA books (writing as Terry Edge). A few years back, he attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop where he learned a lot, including how to hug. He’s also still knackered from the excellent master class workshop in Oregon, run by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. It was there he wrote an early version of this story as a class exercise, with the ghost of his old sign writer master constantly whispering in his ear, “Just do it.” He’s sold around 16 short stories to various pro and semi-pro magazines, including Aeon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Realms of Fantasy.

Punch, or “The London Charivari,” was a British humor (sorry, ‘humour’) magazine that ran from 1841 until 2002. It still has a Web site and cartoon library.

We were not able to find information about the authors of individual stories, so many authors will have to remain anonymous. Project Gutenberg has the complete text of many Punch magazines, and you can find this issue here.

Flash Fiction Online’s Founding Editor Jake Freivald lives in New Jersey in a house teeming with life: a wife, nine kids (yes, all from said wife, no twins), two dogs, two cats, and twenty fish.
Lack of qualifications never stopped Jake from taking a job, so when he saw the need for a professional flash-only ‘zine he created Flash Fiction Online. He was astounded when a team of volunteers rallied around the project, and he would like to shut up now so you can read about them.