I was born Michael Barnett in San Bernardino, California, in August of 1958. I was my parents' first son, in a family that would include three more boys over the next five years.
We led a mostly uneventful life, interrupted by the occasional trip, vacation or emergency. Our dad was working toward his degree at the college literally across the street. We had a family dog, a tree fort in a large walnut tree in our back yard, and a fully functional playhouse.
My best memories from those early years begin when I was three, in 1961. My first book, Eden Fading, chronicles those early memories of tragic events and wonderful redemption from 1961 through 1966.
Spoiler for Eden Fading
Basically, for still unknown reasons, I tried to kill my younger brother, again and again.
In 1972, after my maternal grandfather died, we moved to Lafayette, Indiana, Dad's boyhood home. In seventh grade I first read Tom Sawyer, then Huckleberry Finn. From my young perspective, we could go out into the woods and do whatever we wanted, like Tom and Huck. We made an adventure out of whatever came to mind: building tree houses, claiming an island on the Wabash River as ours, and sailing a raft we made by hand down the Wabash with no plan of where we would end up or how we would get home. By the way, the raft sank.
In eighth grade I broke my hip pole vaulting at a track meet, which effectively ruined my sports career for the next few years. I stayed in the Boy Scouts and made Eagle Scout, and I won the science fair with a demonstration of a Tesla coil.
As a senior, I pole vaulted all the way to the state meet, where I placed eighth with a vault of 14′6″. I was inducted into the National Honor Society, named a Hoosier Scholar, and received the M.E. Becket award for the school's best scholar and athlete. The best thing I earned was a full academic scholarship to Purdue University.
After Purdue, I joined the Air Force and spent the next year in San Antonio for basic and technical school. That's where I met my wife of 47 years. After a three-year assignment in upstate New York, where we were married and our daughter was born, I took an assignment back in San Antonio so my wife could be near family and get out of the cold!
At night school at St. Mary's University I had great English teachers, and that is where I learned to love reading and writing. I have done both ever since. After eight years in San Antonio, I took a position in Dallas, and we have been here ever since.
What made me start writing so late in life? There are many reasons, but the main one is my brother. After our dad died, he convinced me that since I was the storyteller of the family, I should put our story into words. I have since written two books and a short story, and I am working on my third book.
