About Kevin Michaels/Contact

Kevin Michaels is the author of the novels: LOST EXIT and HARD ROAD.

He was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize for my short story: "No Tears For Crying" and another 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination for his story: "Who's got The Action".

His short stories and flash fiction have appeared in a number of magazines and indie zines, including The Literary Review, Word Riot, Six Sentences, Dogzplot, The Foundling Review, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, At The Bijou, and Tuesday Shorts among many others. Other short stories have been included in anthologies for Six Sentences (volumes II and III). He also posts fiction at A COLD RUSH OF AIR (http://kmwriter.blogspot.com), and shows up on his blog: SLIDING DOWN THE RAZOR'S EDGE to offer opinions and POV on topics not too earth-shattering in size, scope, or detail.

He has also published a number of non-fiction articles and stories in print publications ranging from the NYTimes.com and the Life/Style section of The Boston Globe to The Bergen News and Press Journal.

COMING SOON: Upcoming books: NINE IN THE MORNING and STILL BLACK REMAINS and more short stories - check back for details and publication dates.

A writer and surfer, he lives at the Jersey Shore. 
 

Specialties

Writing, freelance assignments, editing, screenwriting, and solving world problems without waiting to be asked.

You can email Kevin, or find him at Facebook or LinkedIn

Cathy Stucker's interview with Kevin Michaels about writing, publishing, Lost Exit, and the writing process can be found here 

An interview with David Wisehart at Kindle Author can be found here 

Excerpts from Kevin's Q and A with Julie Morrigan:

Tell me about your book.

Lost Exit is my attempt at proving Thomas Wolfe wrong. I always believed that you can go home again, at least as a writer. The novel is about a self-destructive college basketball player named Timmy Davenport who comes home to Atlantic City for the summer. It takes place in the late 1990s as the city is transforming from a desolate, faded resort into an entertainment Mecca and Timmy feels like he doesn’t belong any more. His friends have changed, he’s unsure of where he’s going in life, and a bloody neighborhood rivalry between mob gangs has left a trail of bodies scattered throughout the town and might have something to do with his family. It’s all about lost opportunities and last chances in a city filled with drug deals gone bad, mobsters, cops, bullets, a past littered with pain and scars, and a family that has lost faith in him. Kind of a coming of age story that blends basketball and friendship with the emotional struggle of a character searching for his own identity while looking for love.

At the end of the day, Thomas Wolfe was right … you can’t go home again. Everything changes and nothing stays the same.


What was your motivation for writing it?

Aside from the love affair with the city where I grew up and some semi-auto-biographical aspects, it was a little bit of an homage to some of the local characters I grew up with — low-rent gamblers, mobsters, neighborhood basketball stars, and friends looking for direction and purpose in life. Most of whom never found what they were looking for. But the draw was creating Timmy Davenport — he’s a flawed character with a past filled with broken relationships, bad family dynamics, and pain so bad that at times he tried to kill himself. With his addictions and that hurt in his background, he was easy to visualize and I was drawn to his character. I never set out to write a sports book and making teen suicide a significant part of the story wasn’t my original intention, but the book took on a life of its own and charted its own course. And then there was that idea of coming home to Atlantic City …

You can read the entire interview right here