Mike Strickland is an award-winning author of character-driven speculative fiction centering themes of grief, loss, and adversity. He’s made a career out of writing everything from marketing copy and finance articles to technical documentation and mobile app messages—and even twenty thousand science fiction-themed trivia questions. Other jobs he's been paid to do include scuba diver, navigator, call center representative, user experience designer, and science fiction author. His love of words began with reading fantasy and sci-fi, where it has now brought him full circle. After a long hiatus from fiction, Mike reignited his writing career by earning a master’s degree in creative writing from Western Colorado University’s Genre Fiction program and winning the Writers of the Future Contest.

His award-winning speculative fiction has appeared in the bestselling anthology Writers of the Future Volume 42, WordFirePress anthologies Requiem: Anthology of the Undead and Into the Deep, Dark Woods, Amazing Stories, Cast of Wonders, and elsewhere. He’s published hundreds of nonfiction articles in the Los Angeles Times, Disney.com, the Travel Channel, AOL, and many others.

Mike currently lives and writes in a Denver, Colorado suburb, but other places he’s called home include San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, Japan, Honduras, an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, and even a 1973 Volkswagen Squareback. He's not sure if this itinerant lifestyle emerged from his love of travel or vice versa, but his wanderings have undeniably inspired his writing.