Mike is now working on the story of Kris Longknife, Ray and Rita, Trouble and Ruth's great granddaughter and her coming of age as everything in the Society of Humanity seems to come apart.

Mike was born in the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital -- and left town at the age of three days. He managed to avoid Philadelphia again until he got drafted. He avoided very little of the rest of the country. Growing up Navy, he lived just about everywhere you could park an aircraft carrier. It wasn't until high school that he finished a year in the school he started. This gave Mike an early introduction to American geography and the nature of change.

Mike was one of those lucky college students who didn't have to worry about a job after graduation. In 1968, the US Army gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. Fortunately, his war stories are limited to "How I flunked boot camp."

His government career got started when his wife, desperate to find ANY job but working for the phone company, took the government entrance exam on the same weekend Mike wrangled a three day pass. He didn't survive long in his first job as a budget analyst for the Navy Department. He spent an entire day trying to balance the barracks painting account before someone let him in on the secret. They'd hidden the money for refitting a battleship in there. About that time it dawned on Mike that there were a few things about the Navy that even a kid who grew up around it would never understand.

Mike's next job was his break into writing. Working for the Civil Service Commission, he got to answer Congressional inquiry letters from irate people who flunked their exams. Once he even ghosted a letter for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew's signature. Shortly after that, Agnew resigned to avoid prosecution. Of course, Mike had nothing to do with that. Over the next twenty years he branched out into other genres, including instruction memos, policies, performance standards and even a few labor contracts.

In `87, Mike's big break came. He was put on a two year special project to build a digital map showing where the trees, rivers, roads, Spotted Owls and other critters were in the Pacific Northwest. The list went on and on with no end in sight, so after ten years of it, he retired. As the gigabytes of data and the number of revisions grew, Mike gained a new respect for the Earth's ecosystem. It hides its secrets in a massively complex system with enough chaotic tendencies thrown in to keep anyone who studies it humble.

Since there was no writing involved in his new day job, Mike had to do something to get the words out. He signed up for a writing class at the local community college and proudly turned in a story about Star Wars shooting down the second coming of Christ. First person to review the story said it was as good as anything she read in Analog. (Analog's editor didn't agree. He and every other editor in Science Fictiondom turned it down.) The second reviewer had spent a bit more time in the class. He asked where the dialogue was, "You know, Mike. The stuff in quotes." About that time it dawned on him that writing Science Fiction might be a bit harder than negotiating a labor contract.

It was two years later that Analog bought "Summer Hopes, Winter Dreams" for the March, 1991 issue. Four years later he sold his first novel.

Mike's love for Science Fiction started when he picked up "Rocket Ship Galileo" in the fifth grade, and then proceeded to read every book in the library with a rocket sticker on its spin.

Mike's storied come from his fascination with people and change. Through his interest in history, he has traces the transformations that make us what we are today. Science launches us forward into an ever changing universe. Once upon a time, the only changes in peoples lives came with the turning of the seasons and the growing wrinkles on their brows. Today, science drives most of the changes in our daily lives. Still, we can't avoid the pressure of our own awakening hormones or hardening arteries. Mike is happiest when his stories are speeding across thin ice, balanced on the edge of two skates, one anciently human, the other as new as tomorrow's research.

Now that he's retired, Mike is concentrating on writing. Trained in International Relations, he's also studied history and salary administration, theology and counseling. In retirement, he's looking forward to a serious study of human folly and glory.

He lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife Ellen, his mother-in-law and any visiting grandkids. He enjoys reading, writing, watching grand?children for story ideas and upgrading his computer ?? all are never ending.