John Rice ("Ursa Major") is an attorney in Winchester, Ky., having come to the law after stints in construction, vocational rehabilitation and operating a motorcycle shop. He has traveled by motorcycle extensively and almost always successfully in numerous states, countries and frames of mind. Even after this encounter, he still supports the right to arm bears.

Sexton Parsons (“In Country Churchyards”) is a churchmouse who aspires to be a freelance journalist in the tradition of E.B. White, C. S. Monkfester and other Golden Age scribes.  He has studied rural church life from the inside out, and he has a small but solidly packed trunk of MSS. awaiting discovery.  Anyone out there willing to spend a lot of time reading very small handwriting?

Amelia Anne Schafer (Rutherford) (“A Narrative Told to a Sony”) is described in detail in the “Afterafterword” to her stories.

Professor Loose (“The Horror of Poison Gas and the Coming of Fire," Frosty Mug Lecture #007) expounds upon the making of the world whilst gently or otherwise putting pie-eyed hecklers in their place. If not for our randomly assigned "designated reporter," whose blood alcohol temperature must not rise above boiling, the content of the happy hour lectures would surely be lost to humankind mere hours after their delivery.

Fortescue “Kid Spats” Deepelum (“Jazzin’ Babies Blues”) takes an encore.  He is the reigning dean of cranky jazz criticism (other contenders having died off) with a vast c.v. of jazz journalism for organs like Women’s Wear Daily, The Plumber’s Union Clarion-Ophicleide, Akron Libertarian Retread, etc.  It has been said of him that “his head is packed solid with jazz” and that he is the East Coast’s answer to Studs Terkel, “dispensing sparkling jazz talk with grit, gumption and moxie,” in equal measures.  He lives in Spondulick, Maine, in a converted eighteenth-century sail locker.

Elliad Orthobrogus (“Toasty Loaf Chronicle of Literary Dirt") took a deliberate U-turn in a once ascendant career in traditional journalism to return to the only thing that ever made him happy, muckraking among society's elite. Described by a former agent of rocker/actor Meat Loaf as "half swamp fox, half Sherlock Holmes and half National Enquirer," Orthobrogus has in recent years felt growing responsibility for recording those inconvenient bits the powerful would keep from the light. He laments his former irresolute ways, as where he found that not publishing such exposés as The Hollywood Falsie, Denture and Hairpiece Lists was vastly more lucrative than breaking the stories.