Biography

Michael currently lives in Santa Barbara, California, a paradise of billionaires, bums, writers and swindlers. The challenge, on any given morning at Starbucks in Montecito, is to tell them apart.

He was raised in Kansas and learned to drive a tractor and judge ‘tornado weather’ by age six. In high school, Michael played sports and got to know Steinbeck, Asimov, Bellows, Hemingway and Herman Hesse. Migrating to the Great Pacific Northwest, Michael attended the University of Washington before moving to Northern California and taking a job on a newspaper near Lake Tahoe.  After working for five years and writing hundreds of stories, he left the paper to go on his own. During the next decade, he traveled the world, writing six books, scores of magazine and newspaper articles, and TV scripts based on his stories in Reader’s Digest.

During the 1990s, he was one of the Digest’s (the highest-paying magazine at the time) most prolific writers.  The magazine had a readership of more than 100 million people in more than 20 countries, making Michael one of the best-read authors in the world.

Always compelled by politics, he jumped at the offer in 1999, to become the speech writer for the future Mayor of Los Angeles.  Writing more than 200 speeches in taxi cabs, airplanes, on the Statehouse steps and only rarely in an office, he also found out what happens behind the proverbial closed doors. It's what you think, but maybe even more. There were some inspirational, funny and even elevating moments, but more than anything his experiences validated the old journalist rule:  "If you want the truth, follow the money trail."

In the past few years, he has served as managing editor for a national business magazine, founded and operated a non-profit organization for the cancer victims whose stories he chronicled in Fatal Deception, and worked as a branding agent and communications director for a national corporation.  He is currently on his own and as always – is on the hunt for a great and compelling story to tell.