AJ Bauers

AJ BAUERS is an author, artist, and freelance creator.

She graduated from the University of Southern Maine in January 2017 with an MFA in popular fiction. Her favorite genres to write are fantasy and science fiction, although she’s been known to crank out a few horror and literary stories. She also loves coming up with stories that include an interactive format. Her current work-in-progress is a dark, contemporary fantasy YA novel that includes a companion blog, a spotify song list, secret puzzles, and crossed out text.

In between her own artistic pursuits, AJ also enjoys creating for others. She’s written promotional materials for comic books and alt text for math textbooks. She’s also drawn illustrations for authors and logos for small businesses owners.

Bo Balder

BO BALDER is a freelance writer who lives and works in the ancient Dutch city of Utrecht, close to Amsterdam. When she isn’t writing, you can find her madly designing knitwear, painting, or reading anything and everything from Kate Elliott to Iain M. Banks or Jared Diamond.

Her fiction has appeared in Penumbra, Electric Spec and quite a few anthologies. Her sf novel The Wan will be published in 2015 by Pink Narcissus Press.

Elizabeth J. Norton

BORN and raised in a tiny, rural town in Michigan, Elizabeth has always been a lover of books, reading, and the written word. She taught herself to read at the age of four and first professed literary aspirations at the age of six when she began writing “stories” in the first grade. That year, she was quoted in the school yearbook as saying, “When I grow up I want to be a writer.”

During high school, she worked as a shelving page at her local public library and was awed by the access to free books. Her parents encouraged her to consider a career as a librarian, but Elizabeth wasn’t so sure. After all, what self-respecting child wants to be a librarian when they grow up?

Elizabeth attended Alma College, where she majored in English with minors in Spanish and vocal music performance. It was at Alma that she first encountered Joshua Mercier, the Bearded Scribe, in a voice class of only four students. When four people are constantly performing for one another, it is hard for them not to become friends, and Joshua was a true kindred spirit (and one who could sing “Stars” from Les Miserables like it was written for him, at that!). Over the next three years, they became fast friends over shared deadlines, late-night editing sessions, and innumerable cups of coffee.

After graduating from Alma, Elizabeth wanted to teach composition at a small college, but quickly realized that doing so would mean choosing just one area of literature in which to specialize for her graduate degrees—an impossible task for a lifelong lover of the written word. The next logical career choice was library science. This proved that Elizabeth’s parents were (and still are) all-knowing and always right.

Elizabeth entered the Library and Information Science Program (now known as the School of Library and Information Science) at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, in the fall of 2003. During her time at WSU, she lived in a fourth-story apartment in a building that had originally been built in the 1920s as a brothel. Although it had long since been taken over by the university and converted into apartments, it still contained many of the original fixtures—as well as the spirits of most of its original occupants. This would have been great novel fodder, but Elizabeth was too busy studying to write, earning her Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Youth and Teen Services for Public Libraries in December of 2004, six weeks shy of her twenty-fourth birthday.

After library school, Elizabeth moved back home to await the mercy of the job market, working days as a substitute teacher and nights as a grocery store cashier. For the next two years, interviewing for library jobs took her to all parts of Michigan as well as several other states, until she landed her first “real” job as a children’s librarian. Unfortunately, the library underwent a severe budget crisis and Elizabeth’s position was cut after just six months. Following a brief stint of unemployment, the Commerce Township Community Library in Commerce Township, Michigan, hired her as their very first Teen Librarian.

Five years after being hired in her current position, Elizabeth is finally beginning to feel like she knows what she is doing. She develops and maintains all aspects of the Teen collections for the library and implements library programs for grades six through twelve. She is also training her very own army of devoted minions under the guise of coordinating the library’s Teen Advisory Board, so her plan for world domination is progressing nicely.

In 2011, Elizabeth applied and was accepted as a professional reviewer by Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) Magazine, a journal that focuses on teen services in libraries. After publishing several reviews in VOYA, she was just beginning to turn her thoughts back to writing fiction when she reconnected with her old friend, Joshua, and he invited her to be part of the team at The Bearded Scribe.

When not working at the library, Elizabeth enjoys cooking, reading, singing, and any kind of travel, especially tall-ship sailing. Her favorite places to write are her backyard patio and a table at a local coffee shop. She has also recently discovered an affinity for plotting at the coffee table in her living room—usually with a cup of coffee (dark roast with half-and-half and honey, please) in hand and Joshua on the other end of her iPhone as they carry out one of their infamous, late-night textathons. She lives in Metro Detroit and is working on her first, as yet untitled, novel, which features a remote monastery, gypsy curses, and monks behaving badly.

Joshua Allen Mercier

JOSHUA ALLEN MERCIER was born in the seaside city of Biddeford, Maine—a city which shares its name with an English brother (Bideford, England) and an Irish sister (Biddeford, Ireland), but is steeped instead with Quebecois ancestry. A curious little city with a curious little nugget of fact unknown to most history books: it was the first settlement in New England, established in 1616 by physician Robert Vine—that’s four years before the Mayflower landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, although Joshua‘s a descendant of that stock, too, on his mother’s side.

Although his mother and sister read to him as a child, his love affair with fantasy came with a treasured copy of Katherine Patterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, given to him by perhaps one of his favorite teachers, Mrs. Carpenter, and since that time he’s been hooked on speculative literature. It was Mrs. Carpenter, as well, who encouraged the budding poet inside of Joshua.

At the age of eight, Joshua‘s mother and step-father moved to north-central Maine, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere. Literally. That brownish-red area surrounding the farmhouse circled in the picture to below—in case you were wondering—is miles and miles of potato fields! Perhaps the best part of all: the farmhouse in the center of that red circle was haunted! Maybe it was a catalyst for Stephen King, too, but let’s just say that surrounded by the complete LACK of civilization lent itself to an overactive imagination.

BECAUSE there are only two seasons in Maine—Winter and Mosquito—going outside was often impossible. Joshua was content being cooped up in his room, however, as there wasn’t much to do in the middle of nowhere anyway. His face was always buried deep inside the covers of a book. There was something about being drawn into a book, another world, a world different from his own, to which he could escape…and each book (or series of them) transported him to yet another.

Joshua‘s love for reading has never changed, but around the fourth grade, his new love became writing. His obsession with speculative fiction continued through the words he excitedly scribed. In seventh grade, he began writing his first novella, The Haunting Truth, about the haunted house in which he lived for four years of his childhood.

AFTER high school, Joshua moved halfway across the country [latitude-ly speaking], leaving all his family and friends to attend Alma College in Alma, Michigan. There, he swooned many a lady with coffee in exchange for tantalizing, late-night discussions about life and literature, who later were saddened to learn men were more of his cup of tea.

It was at Alma that he honed his writing craft and worked on the beginning stages of his manuscript, The Assassin of Aldarhaij; and, through the support and critiques of his professors and peers, he began to mould his manuscript into its current state. Although he had to leave after his third year, his time spent at Alma College are among the fondest of his memories, and the friends he made there will be friends for life.

IN February 2012, after finally completing his manuscript the previous fall, Joshua decided to launch The Bearded Scribe in hopes of connecting with other fans and writers who shared his love of speculative literature. It is upon its launch that Joshua re-connected with his college friends, Sara and Elizabeth. Elizabeth‘s passion for the blog landed her the position of Assistant Editor and Most-Esteemed Beta Reader, and with her, Joshua has accrued an un-repayable debt. After its launch, Joshua added several members and friends to the team; and although Elizabeth found it rather comical that a gay bloke had managed to acquire a harem of leading ladies, he wouldn’t have changed his staff for anything!

Unfortunately, in 2016, Joshua took some time away from writing after a major life-altering event, but has—after 8 years—started writing again and decided to re-launch the site and blog, which unfortunately he had to re-build from scratch thanks to someone hacking into the old site and corrupting it.

Since the start of his hiatus from writing and the site, Joshua has experienced quite a bit of change, which he outlines in his first series of posts since the re-launch, appropriately titled “New Beginnings.” In 2022, just shy of a decade in Atlanta, Georgia, he relocated to sunny Tampa, Florida with his husband, Emerich, and their two miniature schnauzers, Madeleine Sophia and her son, Lucas Xavier. When he’s not blogging, reading, or writing, Joshua enjoys singing (in the shower, car, or en plein air), cooking delicious dishes, crafting masterful cocktails, traveling or attending music events, watching movies or game nights with friends, or forever honing his graphic design skills.

He’s currently ambitiously plotting and writing a 7-book series called Echoes of Eden, the first book of which is called Wonderspark.