Michael’s first mystery, Dream with Little Angels, will be published on June 25, 2013 by Kensington Publishing Corp.. It is a mystery novel set in Southern Alabama in the late 1980s and is told by his protagonist eleven-year-old Abe Teal, the son of the detective, Leah Teal, solving the case. The story is tragic, heart-warming, sad, and even, at times, funny.
You will notice a countdown clock has been added to the top right corner of this website counting down the days, minutes, hours and seconds until that book is released.
New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie calls it “a coming-of-age gem” and says his protagonist is “as engaging as Harper Lee’s Scout.”
Lisa Jackson, another New York Times bestseller, says the book “captured [her] from page one.” She says, “It’s honest, it’s raw and it’s one of the best books [she's] read in a long, long while”
And Carolyn Haines, 2010 Recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writers, calls it, “A trip to the dark side of a town much like Mayberry, filled with that elusive quality of childhood and the aura of safety that often settles, unjustifiably, over rural small towns in the South”
Kensington will also be publishing the sequel to Dream with Little Angels, a novel called Close to the Broken Hearted that might have even more pathos than it predecessor. It’s scheduled to come out in the summer of 2014.
Michael has finally released his first non-fiction book. A year in the writing, this hefty tome is called Journeys under the Moon: Writing and the Hero’s Quest. It was originally written to supplement a series of workshops Michael is giving on the craft of writing good, sellable fiction, but the reaction from early readers has been so great, Michael’s made it available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the places that Smashwords distributes to for the general public to purchase.
There is both a trade paperback and an ebook version available. The trade paperback is considerably better than the ebook because it has illustrations and graphs and things that had to be taken out of the ebook.
Journeys discusses Michael’s take on writing the Hero’s Journey, which is a simplified version of what most books will have you try. The structure in this book is so fluid and simple that it will have you writing stories that work in no time at all. He also discusses general writing concepts as well, but probably the most fascinating part of the book is the last third which talks about Jungian archetypes and how you can use them to make your fiction ring true and strike the hearts of readers. There is also a section on finding archetypal themes, the use of which guarantees your stories will entertain and move people across cultural and continental barriers.
The book is going to be used as the text for Michael’s upcoming course at Writer’s Village University (WVU) called Writing the Hero’s Journey. The course doesn’t begin until August 14th, so there’s still plenty of time to sign up. The folks at WVU are great, and if you’re looking for a place to learn about writing and hang out with some fantastic people, it can’t be recommended enough.
Michael recently launched his new short story collection Sometimes the Angels Weep. The launch was incredibly successful, and the book is available as a trade paperback and as a Kindle ebook on Amazon and elsewhere.. It contains what he considers to be the ten best short stories he’s ever written, including all his award-winning titles. Like his upcoming novels, it’s something he’s very excited about it.
Michael also writes books for children and young adults. His young adult books along with his short story collections are published by his own imprint, Dangerboy Books. Most of them are available in both trade paperback and eBook formats.
