Matthew Bieniek

Matthew Bieniek lives in Brookfield, Illinois with his wife, Stephanie. He is a regular open-mic reader at the Tamale Hut Café Reading series in North Riverside, IL, and is the coordinator of the Tamale Hut Café Writers Group.

Matt has been a programmer and IT support analyst for the last 35 years, and had done some technical writing as part of the job. In 2010, he decided to try a different sort of writing after he stumbled on the NaNoWriMo web site. He's still not sure what possessed him to think that he could write a 50,000 word novel in a month, but he completed the challenge, and he hasn't looked back.

His books so far have leaned towards character-driven mystery and suspense. He'd really like to write a hard-boiled pulp story, because that's what he likes to read, but the characters haven't taken him there yet.

He credits an early obsession with comic books for helping to develop his love of reading and interest in words. (Ask him about the 'pyrotechnics' story some time.) He is currently working on his Barnstormers trilogy, the second book having been published in November, 2020.