Heather Parker lives in the Lake District with a collection of cats, dogs and a husband. Until recently she worked for the University of Cumbria but now writes freelance.

Her novel ‘Middlewitch’ could be described as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Jeeves and Wooster and was inspired by her life in a small English village, although naturally there are no witches or ghosts there—as far as she knows. She should perhaps add that none of the characters bear any resemblance to her friends and neighbours—particularly those in the Women’s Institute.

She has won prizes in several major literary competitions and many of her stories and articles have been published in popular magazines including The People’s Friend, The Weekly News and The New Writer. Other publications include Space and Time, Bards and Sages, Abandoned Towers, Big Pulp, Glassfire, Expanded Horizons, Sniplits, Woman’s Weekly, Outercast, Hackwriters, The Ranfurly Review and others. Her stories also appear in the Out of Line Human Rights Anthology 2009, Little Sisters Mystery Anthology and the upcoming Sonar 4 and Absent Willow Review anthologies.

Being a witch isn’t always easy. Alicia Meldrew has managed to learn love potions with only one real mistake, and that was hardly her fault. She can whip up a mean maths retention spell, but it’s not all cake and roses. Take dating, for instance. As Alicia herself puts it, how does one even bring it up? “Hobbies? Yes, I usually practise the black arts on Mondays, Thursdays and every other weekend. You?”

Alicia is a young witch with a mission: to protect the citizens of Middlewitch, a sleepy little hamlet consisting mostly of a church, a senior citizen’s home, a pub, and two constables. You’d think such a small town wouldn’t have problems with dark forces, but you’d be wrong. With the help of her cats, Domino and Tango, the Women’s Institute, and even the Vicar, Alicia faces down demons, vampires, satanists, an American…and even the City.

She finally has a boyfriend, but is she really able to learn to share her life with James? And if she can, is she strong enough to learn to get on with his mother?

As a child, Imogen Howson loved reading so much that she not only read in bed, at the table and in the bath, but in the shower and—not so successfully—on her bicycle.

She enjoyed books in a slightly unorthodox way, too—many of her childhood books have ragged edges where she tore paper from the margins in order to eat it.

When Imogen and her younger sister became bored on long walks or family outings, Imogen entertained them both with stories about fairies or, in defiance of biology, “the people inside your body” who made everything work.

Sometimes this storytelling talent was put to a less benevolent use. For weeks, Imogen convinced the little girl next door that the fairy queen was planning to take the little girl on a wonderful trip to fairyland. When Imogen’s conscience got the better of her and she had to confess the truth, she did try to comfort the little girl by telling her about heaven instead, but she never managed to make it sound as appealing as fairyland.

Some years later, Imogen only tells stories clearly labelled “fiction.” She writes novels and short stories—in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, young adult and romance, for preference—and is a member of EPIC.

Imogen lives near Sherwood Forest in England with her partner and their two children. She still reads in most places, but she no longer eats paper.

The short paranormal romance Meeting in Darkness, which she wrote for the Romance Divas Valentines Day Challenge is available at her website.

On Fern’s 18th birthday, she discovers she’s a fire-starter. It’s a gift, and she’s glad to have it. But fire starting is a curse as well as a blessing. Fern must learn how to control it, and to do that she has to leave her home and family, lest she burn them all by accident. Fern travels to a place where other young people have gathered to learn how to manage their gifts. Though none are firestarters, they understand self-control, and there are books to help. And that’s where she meets Nik, the enigmatic magician who seems to understand her and her gift better than she does herself.

From the moment they meet, sparks fly, sometimes literally. Nik makes her lose her temper faster than anyone else can, but he understands her better than anyone else, too. Fern realizes something she didn’t look for and didn’t expect; she’s falling in love with him.

But can Nik be trusted? Or is he hiding dangerous secrets of his own?

Candy is living a fairy tale dream. She has a rich husband who will buy her anything. She has a maid. She gets to have cocktail parties and trade banter with witty, rich, important people. Except… their friends are really his friends and, crazy or not, she sometimes feels like they watch her. It’s a problem because she keeps losing her shoes and her husband thinks bare feet are trashy.

She knows she should just tell him that she likes going barefoot and expect that he’d learn to love her just as she is, only he’s older and more sophisticated than she is, he takes such good care of her, and he loves her so much. Mostly, though, she’s afraid of what he’d do.

Authors Adrienne J. Odasso, Jennifer Moore, Batya Deene, Fraser Sherman, Angela Rega, Imogen Howson, Jo Thomas, Joselle Vanderhooft, Jessica Tudor, Greg O. Weatherford, Hilary J. Nowack, Genevieve Valentine, Skadi meic Beorh, H. Anne Stoj, David Sklar, Lee Pletzers, and Teresa Wymore re-tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood in poetry and prose, illustrated by the art of Anna Repp. In these stories, Red is sometimes innocent, sometimes less so; and the wolf is sometimes a monster, and most often human, monstrous or not.