M. Shawn Petersen

Born in rural Oregon, as a child M. Shawn Petersen spent his days daydreaming under the canopy of the apple and filbert trees on his Grandparents’ orchard, sowing the seeds that would blossom into a fertile imagination. Deciding to travel the world instead of going to college, he visited distant lands and embarked on adventures from which he still draws inspiration, tales which themselves read like stories in their own right - escaping from a North African prison cell, skydiving over the snow covered peaks of the French Alps, trekking through the tangled vines of Guatemalan jungles, and swimming away from hammerhead sharks in the crystalline waters of Belize. Even these travels failed to satisfy his wanderlust, so soon after returning home, MSP took to the skies once more, and spent 20 years traveling the globe as a flight attendant, where the solitude of hotel rooms in far flung cities afforded him the space to hone his writing skills. But it wasn’t until he was stranded in Mexico City, watching helpless as his coastal home of Galveston, Texas was pummeled flat by the angry winds of Hurricane Ike, that he was finally inspired to pull the threads of yarn around an idea that would weave his bookshelf full of tales into a single story. And so was Stella born, of land, of sea and of sky—a fitting character to bring these adventures to life. Currently, with his head still in the clouds and his fingers tap dancing across the keyboard, M Shawn Petersen writes and spends his time between Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California.