Other Guests
Writers, Artists, and Singers
DemiCon 19: May 2-4,2008
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Sara M. Butcher's work comes mostly from self-motivation
to learn the human figure. The daughter of an art teacher
and a crafter creative, her interest in art began at an early
age. Finding strength and inspiration in the spirituality of
Christianity, her work has become all encompassing for love,
peace, harmony, and honor. One of our local artists, Sara
teaches art to children and teenagers at the Des Moines Art
Center.
John and Denise Garner have both been going to
science fiction conventions since the 1980s. Both have won
many awards for their artwork at conventions throughout the
Midwest, and with good reason. They are DemiCon favorites
for their friendly personalities, as well as for their art. Denise
will once again host her Saturday afternoon tea party, and
the couple is planning to host Karaoke in their hotel room.
While John seeks the holy grail of the most decadent
chocolate dessert in the universe, Denise makes, wears, and
sometimes sells exotic hats.
Erin McKee, DemiCon 4's Artist Guest of Honor has been
painting professionally for the past thirty years. However,
she's been an artist all of her life. Erin's style blends a realistic
style with elements of fantasy. While working primarily
in acrylics, pastels, and lately digital media, she has also
done works on scratch board and with pen & ink.
The great Luke Ski, also known as Luke Sienkowski,
lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He is a cartoonist and caricaturist
in addition to his work in comedy music. He has performed
at science fiction and gaming conventions across the U.S.
Mr. Ski has released many albums, and is a favorite on the
Dr. Demento show. He has been called "the next Weird Al",
partly because he's the only one other than Mr. Yankovic to
hit Dr. Demento's #1 "Funny 25" spot two years in a row
with different songs. Check out his website at lukeski.com.
Cynthia Williams loves to write romance and her favorite
worlds to play in are science fiction and paranormal. She is
happily married to her hero, whose characteristics come
through her story's heroes. She currently lives in Minnesota,
in a house built at the height of the bomb scare of the '50s
-- her writing room has three foot thick walls of reinforced
concrete.
Susan Satterfield is the author of seven published short
stories: "Mirror of His Soul" and "The Changing," both
appearing in Eldritch Tales, and "A Perfect World," appearing
in the Yard Dog Press anthology, Stories That Won't Make
Your Parents Hurl, in November of 2000. Her chapbook,
Mirror Images, was published by Yard Dog Press in May of
2002. "The Lady Killer" and "Sweet Teddy" appeared in an
anthology entitled Small Bites in September 2004. She is
also the author of "A Bubba Poet" found in The International
House of Bubbas and "What Goes Around" from the
anthology Flush Fiction. Susan's seventh short story entitled,
"Close Encounters of the Bubba Kind," can be found in the
Yard Dog Press anthology Houston, We've Got Bubbas. She
has a number of writing projects on (and sometimes under)
the table. She is an English Instructor at Longview College in
Lee's Summit, Missouri where she lives with her extended
family including four dogs, five cats, and assorted fish.
Lars Pearson is one of the foremost experts on "Doctor
Who" in North America. He thanks God that the new series
has finally silenced those who preferred to overlook the
original show's imagination in favor of giggling over how the
spaceships looked like dish soap bottles. He's also pleased
that the new show has gotten his wife interested in "Doctor
Who." (Although her new-found rabid interest in "Doctor
Who" fanfic is slightly disturbing. It worries him when she
starts randomly asking him under what conditions the TARDIS
console pulsates.) Pearson cut his teeth as an editor for
"Wizard: The Guide to Comics", then founded Mad
Norwegian Press -- a publisher of SF reference guides and
novels -- in 2001. The company ethnically made less sense
when it was based in New Orleans (he had the option of
getting married by a voodoo priestess, if that tells you anything),
but it now resides in Des Moines, Iowa, where it is
surrounded on all sides by corn and pastry-baking Scandinavians.
Pearson has authored, edited or published 11 books
on "Doctor Who" (with something like nine more on the
way), plus guide-books on "Angel", "Buffy the Vampire
Slayer", "Transformers" and more. He served as editor of
"Faction Paradox", a series of science fiction novels that
recently concluded with a young woman traveling back in
time to do her thesis on Sherlock Holmes, only to wind up
sleeping with him. Pearson wishes his own thesis had been
half as exciting.
Christa Dickson spends her nights thinking far too hard
about the Whedon-verse. While this trait is not especially
useful in her nine-to-five existence, it does make for interesting
bar conversation. It also has the side benefit of
resulting in books with elaborate sub-titles like "Dusted:
The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and
"Redeemed: The Unauthorized Guide to Angel," which she
co-authored with her delightfully wordy husband Lars Pearson
and professional madman Lawrence Miles. There are times
when she wonders why she continues to subject herself to
this madness, since it tends to dull the shininess of her
hobbies. But then she'll find herself in a conversation about
cosmology of demons and get all giddy like a schoolgirl.
When she's not pondering the intricacies of the vampire
invitation rule or wondering how fast Spike's hair grows,
she enjoys yoga, whipping grass and cooking things that
contain no meat. She currently spends her days making web
sites go for Iowa Public TV. Occasionally she dreams in code.
She wishes she wouldn't, as it tends to make her mornings
more pixellated around the edges.
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