Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner (born December 30, 1950 in Eugene, Oregon) is an American writer. Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, but then identified with cyberpunk, and later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and fantasy elements. He was formerly a resident of Texas (and a member of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop), and now lives in North Carolina. Shiner graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1973. Several of his novels have rock music as a theme or main focus, especially the musicians of the late 1960s; for example, Shiner's 1993 novel  Glimpses considers the great never-recorded albums of The Doors, Brian Wilson, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. "Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story" (1999) focuses on a fictional up-and-coming female musician and her subsequent fall back down. "Slam" (1990) is immersed in skate punk and anarchist culture. Perhaps because novels with music as a major theme are not generally considered mainstream genre material, his work has frequently been overlooked. He is a contributing author to the George R. R. Martin-edited anthology "Wild Cards", notably creating that universe's most powerful character, the tantric sex magic wielding pimp , Fortunato. In July 2007 Shiner created the web site Fiction Liberation Front (FLF) as a venue for his short stories. The stories are released under the Creative Commons license and are available in HTML and PDF formats. Since 2006, Shiner has been a card-carrying member of the radical labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World. On July 22, 2007, The News & Observer began publishing a weekly column by Shiner, titled "Graphic Scenes", about comics.