Alan Vincent Michaels' bio

How should I begin my story? Naturally, the beginning is a good place to start, but which beginning?

Maybe I should start by setting the location...

"I live with my wife in a suburban dwelling on the 'North Coast,' the Lake Ontario shore of Upstate New York. I've made Rochester, New York my home for the past thirty years. After countless trips to exotic locales over the years to escape the harsh winters, it might finally be time to consider moving to a place that has more days of sunshine than of snow and gray skies."

Take you back to the beginning of my time on Earth...

"I was expelled small, wet, and naked from a comfortable environment into a cold, disjointed world enthralled by the 'Space Race,' tantalized by the 'Golden Age of Computers,' and enraptured by the advent of color television. Certainly, it's little wonder I grew up wanting to be an astronaut (didn't make it), a software programmer (did make it), and an advertising company owner (did make it and worked at it for almost a decade). But growing up across the street from a public library's treasure trove of novels and books is what inspired me the most and set my compass to the course of becoming a science fiction poet and author (almost there)."

Make it more personal...

"I was born in my nation's capital, Washington, D.C., a year before bullets fired from a bookstore repository window shattered the dreams of Camelot. The couple who brought me into this world instilled in me a reverent love of the written and spoken word, science, classical music, and the need to live a tolerant, open-minded, and critical-thinking life in a self-tormented world, all of which served me well as a solid foundation to my otherwise tumultuous childhood and young adulthood that was frequently punctuated by the barbed needles of their divorce proceedings."

Maybe, the earliest events in my "writing life"...

"I started writing at an early age, composing occasional poems and detailed stories about living in the future and traveling back in time. Sometimes the writing quality was, let's be charitable, awful. At other times, I surprised my teachers with stories and poems that were, one of them opined, the works of others. They were mine. I remember the sleepless nights writing instead of studying for a test or working on another diorama. I still think that ancient beast should be called a 'brontosaurus.' I guess all things change. Pluto is no longer a real planet. I digress. So, just imagine the surprised look on that teacher's face when I composed a poem from a random example given to me in front of the school's principal. Oh, yes, just imagine the look on his face."

Each of these beginnings is certainly true about me, but what of them? Unless you knew the details of my life, and experienced the events and met the people who shaped my existence, what purpose does such information really serve? You could read page after page of my life's story, and, yet, still come up short when asked to describe who I am as a human being.

In truth, all that you'll likely know about me comes from the words I've written that have been published, and I'm sure it probably won't be from the words I use to describe my life.

Instead, I propose entering into a dialogue with you. Admittedly, it's going to be mostly a one-way conversation, with my poems, stories, and novels (soon) painting for you a word-picture of my interests, likes, dislikes, paranoid thoughts, fears, hopes, and, most importantly, dreams.

In the end, I believe it will be my dreams -- the what-ifs, did-you-think-of-thats, and could-be-maybes -- I share with you that will become the best measure of who I am and what I offer a world I will someday leave behind when it's my turn to journey to the stars.

Alan Vincent Michaels
10 March 2010


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