Michael J. Sullivan

After finding a manual typewriter in the basement of a friend's house, Michael J. Sullivan inserted a blank piece of paper and typed: It was a dark and stormy night, and a shot rang out. He was just eight. Still, the desire to fill the blank page and see where the keys would take him next wouldn't let go. For ten years Michael developed his writing craft by studying authors such as Stephen King, Ayn Rand, and John Steinbeck, to name a few. He wrote thirteen novels, and after finding no traction in publishing he quit, vowing to never write creatively again. His hiatus from writing lasted nearly ten years. The itch returned when he decided to write books for his then thirteen-year-old daughter, who was struggling because of dyslexia. Intrigued by the idea of a series with an overarching story line told through individual, self-contained episodes, he created the Riyria Revelations. He wrote the series with no intention of publishing it, but upon presenting his book in manuscript form to his daughter, she declared that it had to be a "real" book, bound and formatted, in order for her to be able to read it. So began his second adventure on the road to publication that included drafting his wife to be his business manager, signing with a small independent press, and creating his own publishing company. He sold more than sixty thousand books as a self-published author and leveraged this success to achieve mainstream publication though Orbit (the fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group) as well as foreign translation rights for France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Michael presently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife and three children and continues to fill the blank pages with three projects under development: a modern fantasy novel, a literary fiction piece, and a prequel to his best-selling Riyria Revelations.