Michele Garber was born and raised in Fort Wayne, the second largest city in Indiana. A reader from the beginning, she soon became enamored of fairy tales, Jules Verne's adventures and horror stories, begging her mother to drive her to Little Turtle Library when her voracious appetite for story outgrew the books piled around her room. Star Trek and Captain Kangaroo compete for the position of favorite TV show in her memories of early childhood, which probably explains a lot.

After a relatively uneventful childhood and high school experience, Michele studied at Valparaiso University for a few years, moving back to Fort Wayne to complete her education. Graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology, she worked as a psychiatric technician for several years on the night shift before attending Southern Illinois University in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program.

Captain Kangaroo was winning.

Finishing her master's degree, Michele completed the other requirements for her Ph.D., save one-- the dissertation. After multiple attempts to finish the lengthy document, she acknowledged two important facts--she was dreadfully unhappy, and she wasn't a psychologist.

She was a writer.

Michele formally resigned from the program in December 2008 to pursue her dream and began writing horror, science fiction and fantasy tales for various magazines and anthologies. She made her first professional short story sale ("Just Desserts") to Zombology IV: The Undead vs. The Living Dead in September 2009. Another sale followed soon after in January 2010 to Northern Frights Publishing's War of the Worlds: Frontlines anthology.

Although her fiction writing career is in its infancy, Michele credits years of academic writing and consuming all sorts of "inappropriate" books, movies, and TV shows with her success so far. At work on her first novel, she continues to write short stories, mostly dark fiction, and is quite happy with her career change.

Captain Kirk would be so proud.