Michael Reisman, that's who. He was born in October 1972, in the pleasant, quite-ordinary town of Fair Lawn, New Jersey. He grew up without encountering any alien visitations, fifty-foot ants or really deep rabbit holes; his parents had a wardrobe, but it didn't have any witches or lions inside. Instead, he fed his imagination with comic books, cartoons, movies, television and novels. When Michael was younger, he liked to spend time in the woods around the corner from his house. He never suspected that one day those woods would find their way into his first published novel. He enjoyed coming up with stories in his head and sometimes doodled them; his favorite thing to draw was a cute fire-breathing bunny spitting fire at its attackers.


Michael went to college in upstate NY at the State University of New York, Albany (a.k.a. SUNY Albany), and he graduated with a degree in Psychology and English. He's had many jobs: a pizzeria dishwasher, a supermarket checkout boy, and spraying cologne in a department store (he got fired on his first night). He's worked making smoothies, selling retail clothing, and he washed enormous party tents for one day. He's worked for a software company, and temped at various jobs in the movie/ TV industry, including an assistant for Tom Hanks for a few months. He's tutored for the SATs (verbal) and has been a script/ book reader for various movie and television companies, including Dreamworks/ Dreamworks Animation, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network. Some of his friends describe it as getting paid to write book reports; they're not entirely wrong. But he's happy - he loves to read, and he's making money doing it.


Michael grew up with two dogs (as well as fish, newts, hermit crabs and a bunny with dental problems), and he dearly misses them. One day, he vows, he will get a dog...but not yet. In the meanwhile, he lives in Los Angeles, where he has a small fish tank and a plant. Neither the fish nor the plant comes when he calls or enjoys a good scratch behind the ears, though.