Peter Balaskas
Born in Brooklyn from Italian/Greek descent, Peter is indeed a man of many professions — including a microfilm clerk, an environmental and pharmaceutical chemist, a theatre actor, a freelance news camera operator, an NBC Page for The Tonight Show, a camera technician for NBC/Universal Studios, and, from 2004-2009, Owner/Managing Editor of Ex Machina Press, LLC, the proud parent of Silent Voices: A Creative Mosaic Of Fiction, until he finally discovered his niche: speculative fiction writer, playwright, freelance journalist, SEO web content copywriter, and copyeditor. His early literary influences include Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, Rod Serling, and many others. His theatrical influences include Eugene O’Neil, Anton Chekhov, Neil Simon, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Donald Margulies, David Mamet, Brian Friel, and Shakespeare, of course.
His fiction and poetry have been published internationally. His gothic horror novella, "The Chameleon's Addiction" was a semi-finalist in the 2004 Glacier Press Writing Contest and is now published in Bardic Tales and Sage Advice, Volume Two by Bards and Sages Publishing, who also published his short novel, The Grandmaster, a supernatural thriller that takes place during the Holocaust. Originally his graduate master’s thesis, The Grandmaster ranked second in Bards and Sages nationwide Speculative Fiction Novel Contest, and has been awarded 2007 Best Science Fiction Novel by the Hollywood and New England Book Festivals. His short story, Chamber Music was awarded 2012 Best Short Story by the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition (EPIC).
Additionally, his one-act play, “From the Membrane of the Nucleus” debuted in 2022 at the Newmarket International Festival of One-Act Plays in Ontario, where it was nominated for Best Play, Director, and Actress and it won Best Actor. We'll see what happens in the future when it comes to his playwriting path.
David Lawrence
David Lawrence is an author inspired by the interaction of fact and fiction. To him, fact and fiction are like two querulous school children at play in each other’s sand boxes getting each other into all sorts of trouble. David sees this as more than metaphor. Having been misdiagnosed in 1999 with paranoid schizophrenia, only to have it validated in 2005, he had to learn on his own how to tell the difference between fact and fiction in some rather frightening ways. Still, regardless of past and present trials, David must now do his best to balance his mind and his life so he can do what he wants to do, which is write.
Here at Bards and Sages, David has authored so far three short stories and one novel, 22 Stories: Falling Up. This novel has a website: 22storiesfiction.com. There, you can learn about the other books in the series, both published and planned.
Additional writings by David Lawrence may be accessed via infinitedot.com.