World Fantasy Award Winning Author Michael Shea

Michael Shea is an award winning and bestselling author of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy books.

Michael A. Shea was born to Irish parents in Los Angeles. There he frequented Venice Beach and the Baldwin Hills for their wildlife.

After attending UCLA on the advance Placement program while still in the tenth grade, he made his way to UC Berkeley for the wild-life there during the Time of Troubles.

He hitch-hiked twice across America and Canada, and at a hotel in Juneau Alaska, chanced on a battered book from the lobby shelves: Cugel the Clever, by Jack Vance.

Not till four years later, after a brief first marriage, and a year spent hitch-hiking through France and Spain, did he write homage to Jack Vance, for which that great man graciously declined to share the advance offered by DAW Books. Shea's first novel, A Quest for Simbilis (1974), was an authorized sequel.

Subsequently he ranged all over the L.A. Basin, painting houses and teaching Adult ESL by night. In 1978 he had the blessed luck to meet his wife, artist and author Lynn Cesar. Shea then moved to the Bay Area. 

 

His other novels include:

Nifft the Lean (1982) - received a World Fantasy Award
The Color out of Time (1984) - homage to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space"
In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985)
I, Said the Fly (1993)
The Extra (2010)

The Novella "The Growlimb" (2004) was also a winner of the World Fantasy Award, in the 2005 Novella category. Shea has received many other awards for his writing.

Shea's interest in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos continues. Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales (2010) is a collection of such tales.

 Reviews

SF Site 

The Extra, A review by Seamus Sweeney.

“With its plentiful gallows humour, competitive struggling in a world of scarcity, and dark extension of the reality TV concept to a logical extreme, The Extra is an entertaining mirror of our own strange days.”

 

The Extra, by Michael Shea

(Reviewed by Robert Thompson) on January 27, 2010

“Michael Shea’s “The Extra” is an exhilarating thrill-ride full of creativity, insane action, and accomplished writing. Hugely entertaining, I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy…”

 

To know more about Michael Shea and all of his books visit, http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com or call (707) 838-2523 to set schedule for interview.