Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second-place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that! His work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Writers of the Future, and numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF 4, Man-Kzin Wars XV, The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade, Little Green Men—Attack!, More Human Than Human: Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity, Avatar Dreams, Weird World War III, Weird World War IV, Surviving Tomorrow, Humanity 2.0, Gunfight on Europa Station, and Cursed Collectibles. His Clarkesworld story "Today I Am Paul" appeared in four different year’s best anthologies and eight international editions. His follow-on novel, Today I Am Carey, was published by Baen Books in March 2019. His novel The Last Dance was published by 47North in November 2019, and was the number one science fiction eBook on Amazon during October’s prerelease. The sequel, The Last Campaign was published in October 2020.