About me: I’m a California kid––at least I was. Born in the sixties, I was raised on Star Trek, Frosted Flakes, Irish Catholicism and Cold-war drills at school. A big family, with me the youngest of six, our parents packed us up every summer with the powdered milk and propane pump-lanterns. Despite being the whiny child I often was, I gained a love of travel, for unexplored landscapes, “for all places unknown”. This love grew alongside the love of stories, as well as of heights! A somewhat timid adventurer, I turned to aviation––the next best thing to leaving the planet altogether––applying my cautious consistency to a career that led from flight instruction to small jets, and finally to Alaska, to find my niche on pontoons. (No, I never jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, but I was pushed out on two separate occasions.) Through it all were the stories; movies; books; tales of friends’ adventures in foreign places; the imagined worlds evoked by music. There were the true tales we all hear, about some injustice happening in some other foreign place, letters on behalf of Amnesty International; letters to presidents, to ambassadors, to popes… With the unlimited possibilities of Speculative Fiction leading the way, I feel the pull toward speaking to the human condition on a personal level, from the view of the individual, the character; to answer the question “what would it actually be like?” Writing has been an adventure of its own. It is not an easy task, and it is a surreal thing to see your own creation online, mixed with the unavoidable reluctance to let it go. I believe Dave Mathews once said, “as soon as you let a song out, it no longer belongs to you”. I present these stories to you in humility. I hope you enjoy them. –– Mike
