ValleyCon strives to bring the best and most relevant guests featured in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, comics, gaming and film & TV! These guests include Media Icons, Artists, Authors, Psychics and many more. Autographs are available at one of the industry's LOWEST price point ever. The guest will do panels, readings and demonstrations for your education and entertainment.
Dina Meyer is an American film and television actress best known for her roles as Barbara Gordon in Birds of Prey, Dizzy Flores in Starship Troopers, and Detective Allison Kerry in the Saw films.
Dina Meyer is probably best known for her roles as Barbara Gordon in Birds of Prey, Dizzy Flores in Starship Troopers, and Detective Allison Kerry in the Saw films. She portrayed Mrs. Hong as a recurring guest star on ABC's Scoundrels
Dina Meyer was born and raised in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, but moved to Dix Hills, Long Island, just before her last year of junior high school. Her first experience in the entertainment industry came when she did some modeling from ages nine to 16. She always wanted to become an actress but her parents did not think that was a wise career move; they wanted her to get a good education, so she went to university, graduating from Long Island University in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing (and a minor in French). She has two brothers, one older named Gregory and one younger named Evan.
Meyer started acting in 1993, with her first major role playing Lucinda Nicholson in the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210. In the same year she made her film debut in the TV film Strapped. She broke out two years later, playing the cybernetically enhanced bodyguard Jane in the cyberpunk thriller Johnny Mnemonic.
She moved to eastern Europe for six months while shooting her second movie, DragonHeart (1996). In her very next movie, Starship Troopers (1997), she starred with Casper Van Dien and Denise RichardsI. She was able to score a recurring role on Friends and then had a short-lived part on the television series Michael Hayes (1997) and a guest-starring role in an episode of Ally McBeal (1997) before landing her next movie role opposite James Caan in Poodle Springs (1998), which aired on HBO.
In addition to Johnny Mnemonic, she has played roles in other science fiction productions including Birds of Prey and Star Trek Nemesis. She played Detective Allison Kerry in the horror/thriller film Saw and its sequels. She made several guest appearances on Miss Match alongside another former Batgirl actress, Alicia Silverstone. She also played one of the leads on Point Pleasant. In March 2006, Meyer was in the series premiere episode of Thief as Wanda, the wife of Andre Braugher's character Nick. In 2009 she made an appearance on Burn Notice as Samantha, Michael Weston's ex-fiancee. Meyer has a recurring role on ABC's 2010 series Scoundrels as Mrs. Hong.
Troy Denning is a fantasy and science fiction author and game designer who has written more than two dozen novels.
The New York Times bestselling author of 34 novels, Troy Denning grew up in the mountain town of Idaho Springs, Colorado — which happens to be the home of David Chappellet, Robert Redford’s character in the 1969 ski-racing film, Downhill Racer. After seeing the movie at twelve years of age, Troy was inspired to become an Olympic ski-racing champion.
Sadly, that did not happen.
Instead, Troy retreated into his love science fiction and fantasy, poring over the works of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bova, Burroughs, Tolkien, Norton . . . pretty much anybody who wrote about something other than ski-racing. By the age of fourteen, he had convinced himself that he could tell a better story than any of those fools, and he began to scribble his masterpieces into 80-page spiral-bound notebooks.
Unfortunately, acquiring editors of the time were a stodgy, short-sighted bunch. Most of them didn’t even read handwritten manuscripts, and those who did pretty much insisted on ink. So Troy dragged out his father’s old Underwood typewriter and began to fill old suitcases with typed manuscripts. Some were even neatly typed. Nevertheless, with his acceptance rate still hovering just below zero, by his eighteenth birthday he began to suspect that this writing thing was harder than it looked.
Then Troy opened a SASE containing his short story, “The Ghosts in the Old Argo.” Inside, he found a rejection slip from the legendary editor, Ben Bova. But this time, there was a signature — and a handwritten note thanking him for the submission.
Wildly ecstatic, Troy decided the thing to do was go college and play some Division III football, and maybe then his writing dreams would come true. (If not, he could always turn pro, right?) Beloit College had a football team, and Troy’s English teacher thought it might have a decent writing program. So he went there.
It turned out that Beloit College did have a fine English department, and by the time Troy graduated, he could put together a respectable paragraph. He landed a job editing game material for TSR Hobbies (the producers of Dungeons & Dragons), then spent the next few years honing his skill by working as an editor and game designer.
In 1989, not quite twenty years after deciding to become a writer, he published his first novel, Waterdeep. It became an instant New York Times bestseller (even if it did make the list by the skin of its teeth), and Troy went on to publish more than thirty novels set in many different game and media worlds, including Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Star Wars. Currently, he resides in western Wisconsin with his wife, their two pets, and far too many hosta-eating whitetail deer.
He still writes novels, and it’s still harder than it looks. His most recent book is The Sentinel, the fifth novel in the Forgotten Realms Sundering series.
Tom is a DC and Marvel artist (Blackest Night, Superman, Batman, catwoman…) as well as an acclaimed Pinup artist.
Born in Minneapolis and raised in Burnsville, MN, Tom has been drawing for as long as he could remember. At age 14, he was already commissioned to do portraits of baseball players, and at 16 he was hired to draw caricatures at Valleyfair amusement park and at the Mall of America. But at age 19 Tom was able to break into the industry that he loved most: comic books. Since then he has done work for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Seattle Weekly, Wizard magazine, Dynamite Entertainment, IDW Publishing, Upper Deck Entertainment, Titan Books, and the television series Little Miss Perfect for WeTV among other clients.
Tom has also established himself as a renowned pin-up painter, having worked with some of the top professional models and pageant winners. Although he jokingly refers to himself as "The Prince of Pin-Up," he is most definitely the undisputed "King of Pageantry Pin-Up" as there is no other artist who has worked with more high-placing pageant competitors than Tom has. His work also includes Playboy models and NFL cheerleaders. Tom's pin-up work has been featured in publications such as Club International magazine, American Curves magazine, Aphrodisia 2: Art of the Female Form, and the upcoming How To Airbrush Pin-Ups due Fall 2009. He is also a prize sponsor to the Mrs. Minnesota-, Mrs. Iowa-, and Mrs. Wisconsin-America pageants, providing his rendition of each of the state's winners.
In 2005, Tom and his partner Jeff Pederson released two instructional DVDs: The Doug Mahnke Style of Pencilling and the Tom Nguyen Style of Inking. In September 2007, Tom added "author" to his resume as his first instructional book, Incredible Comics With Tom Nguyen: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Kick-ass Comic Art, hit the shelves at many bookstores. Currently, Tom is writing and illustrating the sequel to his instructional book entitled Incredible Comic Book Women With Tom Nguyen: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Kick-ass Babes.
Acclaimed psychic, Tiffany gives inspiration, insight and understanding into your ever-changing life.
Combs was born in Oxnard, California, and raised in Lompoc. He attended Santa Maria's Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, and later developed his acting skills in the Professional Actor's Training Program at the University of Washington.
Combs's best known horror role was as Herbert West, the main character in the movie Re-Animator, which he has reprised in the film's two sequels.
On television, Combs enjoyed critical and popular success playing alien characters on the various modern Star Trek incarnations, beginning in 1994 with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in 2000 with Star Trek: Voyager, and in 2001 with Star Trek: Enterprise. Combs has played nine different onscreen roles in the Star Trek universe. His largest science-fiction role to date has been his regular guest role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the Vorta clone Weyoun. Combs has said that Weyoun was his favorite Star Trek role, and he had a great deal of input in developing the character.
On the same series, Combs had a recurring role as the Ferengi character Brunt. During the DS9 episode "The Dogs of War", Combs appeared as both Weyoun and Brunt, making Trek history as the first actor to play two unrelated recurring roles on screen in the same episode.