Saints & Heathens

Dixiane Hallaj lives in the small town of Purcellville, Virginia, with her cat named Dog. After a long career as an educator and a business woman, she earned her Ph.D. the year she qualified for Medicare. She has been writing award-winning fiction ever since.

Dixiane spent eleven years living and working in the Middle East as part of her husband's extended family. Her novels about Palestinian refugees are based on her experiences during that time and later, when interviewing women in the camps for her doctoral research.

It's Just Lola is based loosely on the life of her grandmother. She enjoyed writing about the family so much that she carried the characters on to another generation with Aunt Nellie B, a lighthearted fiction.

Learn more about Dixiane Hallaj.

I have been writing speculative science fiction, and short mixed genre flash fiction recently, although I have done some adaptations of neoclassical plays in the past. All the rest is fairly big headed stuff. You are welcome to read on, but you must note that you have been forewarned.

I am currently very fortunate to live in one of the most fortunate places on Earth- Switzerland. Well until retirement age, then I will be in peril of being slung out. The audacious belief that I could make my way in life as an author began in earnest in the winter of 1965, when I turned nine. This passion lasted at least until the freedom of the summer holidays. Of course I dreamed of being the action-hero as well, but the rotten luck of being born rather later than Biggles, and of being too myopic and astigmatic to pass the eyesight tests required of military pilots, ruled out any such heroic future. The honour of flying with James Bigglesworth fell, in my young mind, to the very real figure of my paternal grandfather, Flying Officer Jim Bunning of the RFC.

I meanwhile countered my misfortune with the idea that I could at least be the recorder of the adventures by becoming the natural successor to the writing of Captain W.E. Johns. Early interest in adventure books and tall-stories was tempered by the requirement to reorganise my dyslexic mind. I am currently a writer of speculative science fiction, with three titles: Another Space in Time, Another Space in Time, Returns, and my most recent, Spiderworld.

Learn more about Richard Bunning.