In Michael’s 30-year professional career, he has been a published author/illustrator, an art director, a creative director in both marketing and design, as well as a freelance illustrator. His portfolio contains agency work, interior and cover book illustration, as well as graphic design.
Michael wrote his first children’s book in Burlington, Vermont on a coffee house napkin, on the fourth night of his honeymoon. It was called Before You Were Born and it was before he was a father, a seasoned husband and before he knew. Twenty-three years and seven children later, Michael is telling stories from a lifetime of memories and experiences. Maybe a little bit wiser, but certainly with the same energy and expectation of that young newlywed scribbling possibility under New England’s harvest moon. That nugget, those first notes of Before You Were Born went on to be published by Green Key Books in 2003; sold out its first printing in months and was followed by its sequel Just Like You in 2004.
Michael has encountered many experiences that have been the material and inspiration for eight picture books (three already published), three novels (YA and illustrated) and one graphic novel (his passion project, a collaboration with a NYT bestselling author). In 2005, his eight-year-old son Jesse died in an accidental drowning and three of his children have been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Michael has also traveled to Honduras over the last 12 years to work with children in an orphanage in Tegucigalpa, where he has received much more than he could have ever given.
A recent move to Colorado has availed him the opportunity to retire from the corporate world and to direct 100% of his energies to developing his own literary career. He is also a freelance illustrator, delighting to create the visual language that communicates the heart and the soul of the authors’ words; always mindful of the authors’ message and good marketplace success.
Currently he serves as Program Director on the Board of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association, CIPA.
Michael and his wife, Andi, live in Denver. Likewise, so do his six children. 3 are adults, and 3 are still little.