Raev Gray is a 25-year-old itinerant academic, currently living in the Midwestern United States. She started out her academic career resisting writing as a livelihood. In the meantime, she got exposure to psychology, philosophy, physics, sociology, linguistics, art, anthropology, literature and folklore and wasn’t happy with any one of them. She finally came full-circle and realized that the only way to put all of these together was the thing she’d been avoiding all along.
A perpetual student, Raev received a Master’s degree in Creative Writing in May 2009 and expects to receive a Master’s in Composition and Rhetoric in May 2010. She makes a living teaching, tutoring and studying writing; in other words, being a complete academic masochist. Her teaching often spurs on her own writing, both academic and fictional. Raev has written urban fantasy, historical, m/m and contemporary fiction, sometimes combinations of several of the above.
She loves to explore the depths of the soul, with all of its paradoxes, its triumphs and failures, its beauty and ugliness. Her characters often struggle to find redemption and are always fighting against themselves as much as each other.
She is a chronic multitasker, and at any given time, she is usually working on five or six different things. Every once in a while, she finds time for knitting, photography, art and the Academic Infatuation of the Week. She does too much, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Test of Faith,” and “Spoils of War” co-written with Aleksandr Voinov, are her first published works. In addition, she has several works on the burners, including two urban fantasy series, a contemporary spy thriller romance and several other shorter works.

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Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London where he makes his living as a financial journalist, freelance editor and creative writing teacher. At 34 years of age, he has written about 13 novels and commercially published five with German publishers, plus a number of short stories and poems (even though he still didn’t know how that happened). After many years writing German-language horror, science fiction, cyberpunk and science fiction, Aleksandr is now writing historical and contemporary fiction in English. He publishes non-commercial and fanwork as “Vashtan”.
Intellectually, Aleksandr is drawn to the dark side of human nature and history. As a trained historian, he is fascinated by wars, religion and the conflict between the individual and society (as shown in “Test of Faith”, his eXcessica release). Aleksandr’s characters are often scarred lonely souls at conflict with their environment and pitted against odds that make or break them.
Aleksandr has just barely enough time to take care of a Chinese elm bonsai standing on his desk, goes weight-lifting, and confuses opponents as a left-hander in foil fencing. His interests at the moment include professional chess players, international espionage, tailored suits, and fine Turkish rugs.
Aleksandr’s style has been called "dynamic to the point of breathlessness", "dark to the point of fatalism" and "disturbingly poetic" by publishers and literary agents; however, recently, he has managed to keep some of his main characters alive and most are even getting a HEA or at least HFN ending. He welcomes feedback at vashtan@gmail.com.
Releases:
“Deliverance” in “Forbidden Love”, Noble Romance Publishing
“Burn” in “Echoes of the Future”, Noble romance Publishing
“Spoils of War” at www.smashwords.com (with Raev Gray)
“Test of Faith”, eXcessica (ebook) and www.lulu.com (paper) with Raev Gray
“Clean Slate”, Dreamspinner Press (with Barbara Sheridan)
“Risky Maneuvers”, Loose Id (with Barbara Sheridan) – to be announced
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in “Forbidden Love”, MLR Press - to be announced