Hi, this is Michelle. Here’s where you, brave reader, get to meet us, learn a little bit about us.
For now, I’m just going to insert the About the Author info from the back of my books. This may change without notice!
On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college and has 40+ stories in various SF and fantasy universes. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing. Even worse, she has over 100 books and novellas with multiple small presses, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women’s fiction, and sub-genres of romance.
Her official launch into publishing came with winning first place in the Writers of the Future contest in 1990. She was a finalist in the EPIC Awards competition multiple times, winning with Lorien in 2006 and The Meruk Episodes, I-V, in 2010, and was a finalist in the Realm Award competition, in conjunction with the Realm Makers convention.
Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency; and working at a community newspaper. She is a tea snob and freelance edits for a living (MichelleLevigne@gmail.com for info/rates), but only enough to give her time to write. Her newest crime against the literary world is to be co-managing editor at Mt. Zion Ridge Press and launching the publishing co-op, Ye Olde Dragon Books. Be afraid … be very afraid.
Look for Michelle’s Goodreads groups: Guardians of Neighborlee, Voyages of the AFV Defender, Neighborlee Streets
Deborah started her writing life rather reluctantly with an editor who insisted she could write an Erma Bombeck-ish look at the life of a military wife for an Air Force Officers’ Wives’ Newsletter. Much to her surprise, it became so popular, the men were absconding with their wives’ papers just to read “Debbie’s Diary!” When the family relocated, the column faded into oblivion, but her desire to write did not. So she began writing poetry and devotional articles for various magazines. The pay went from 0 to pennies, which was an improvement. But she still hadn’t found her niche.
Then she went to a high school reunion and met up with fellow alumni who wrote fiction. He dragged her ‘kicking and screaming’, as she often says, into this crazy genre called science fiction and fantasy. And at last, she found her home. Now she writes little else, and has even expanded her repertoire to Christian horror. (Yes, there really IS such a thing!)
Deborah honed her skills in this all-new arena and was eventually tagged to participate in the anthology “Light at the Edge of Darkness” with three of her longer pieces. One of them, “The Rider”, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award. Next, her short story, “Solitaire” was included in the anthology, “The Rise of the Underground”, in the world created by Frank Creed. Then came some very lean years. That first novel was still elusive, though the idea had been simmering for many, many years.
Finally, in 2019, Deborah broke out with The Last of the Long-Haired Hippies Trilogy, a rapid-release three-book supernatural thriller/murder mystery/historical piece with a good deal of the middle part being set in 1968-69 amidst the hippie counterculture. It was a dream come true!
Currently, she is working on a piece set in the Dark Ages about a woman from the 21st century who ‘wished’ for a simple life and was sent back to the year 1189 by a mysterious entity named Lillith. That is, when she isn’t working on anthologies for Ye Olde Dragon Books.
Deborah is a tea snob and drinks copious amounts of Assam or Earl Grey as the mood strikes. She loves puppies, her many grandchildren, and of course… dragons!