For some reason, I kept getting nice notes from some of you asking me to put a few pics of myself on my web site. I resisted for a long time, but eventually yielded to your gentle blandishments. (The lovely nude photos of M.W. holding her favorite of my books between her breasts admittedly got my attention--please feel free to send more such encouragement.) However, since I'm usually the fellow carrying the cameras, I tend to have more and better pics of others than I do of myself. Please make appropriate allowances...

Photo copyright 1999 by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

If you said I was a fuzzy bear who lives in a cave (namely, my basement office), I'd be hard pressed to take offense. I'm not a tie-and-three-piece-suit kind of guy. In fact, I don't even own a suit at the moment, and I only own a tux out of sentimentality--it's the one I wore playing in the orchestra in college.

Speaking of college, I haven't seen my whole face since my freshman year at Michigan State. The beard's fullness, like the length of my hair, varies with the status of my current novel project. I tend to let it grow while I'm working, and get it cut after the manuscript is delivered, by which time I usually look like I just came down out of the woods for the first time in a year. Add a plaid "lumberjack" shirt (the office tends to be a bit cool during both air-conditioning and heating seasons), and I wouldn't look out of place hanging out at the cabin with Benton Fraser.

Living and writing in northern Indiana helped me end up as co-guest of honor (with Marion Zimmer Bradley) at InConJunction in 1985. My first novel, Emprise, had just been published by Berkley. I was happy and pliant. Judy Eudaly (seated to my right) inviegled me into sitting on the otherwise bare stage while the troupe performed, with each dancer coming to sit at my feet after she finished--one of the most agreeable GoH duties I've ever been called on to discharge. (I went on to have a terrific relationship with InCon for ten years, including being toastmaster, "local hero," and GoH a second time, and performing there twice with the Black Book Band.)