Michael J. Martineck

My crimes against speculative fiction: The Tongue Trade (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy) is my most recent book. It is a crime novel set in a world in which you need an interpreter to talk to meet with someone outside your profession. It is a little different from my other crime novel, Untouchable (Our Little Secret Press) that has only a hint of the odd. The Link Boy (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy) is a mystery set in the Freeworld, a future I introduced in The Milkman (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy). The Milkman won a gold medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer awards, given each year for salient writing from small presses. Kind of cool because the IPPY is a science fiction award and the Hoffer is for literary fiction.

The novel before that, Cinco de Mayo (also from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing) was short-listed for an Alberta Readers' Choice Award. That was exciting. Also full of crime and science (and love and loyalty and other things that make us human.)

I started writing stories when I was seven. Over the years, I've put out short stories, comic book scripts, articles and a quartet of novels. I've put countless other ventures in the drawer. The drawer is in my house on Grand Island, NY., a little cap of clay nestled between the US and Canada. This is also the location of my "Ego Retention Program", whereby my beautiful wife and two lovely children continuously call out my various shortcomings, keeping me from becoming the screaming, self-centered artist I long to be. DC Comics published a couple of stories in the early 90s. Planetmag, Aphelion and a couple of other long-dead e-zines helped me out in 00s, along with The Misspellers and The Wrong Channel.