Michael Williams is a full-time author and freelance writer. After numerous careers, he finally returned to writing and reading—passions developed in early grade school. Michael writes using the pen name MJ Logan, although occasionally Michael Logan or Michael James Logan.

I learned to read in first grade, took my first speed-reading course in second grade, and began to write in third grade. Those first few years I made little books with a cover of folded construction paper, plain paper inside, and bound with paste. Anything and everything that I read, saw, or imagined had the potential to inspire another handmade book.

Thanks to an arrangement made by my second-grade teacher, I had unrestricted access to the school library outside of the "Grades 1–3" section. Books filled my world with science and math, mysteries and horror. No, of course I did not show my mother, are you kidding me?

My writing life was not always so idyllic, and I found less opportunity on my way to high school. There I learned to focus and use the tools of the English language. We won't talk about the horrid and deranged English Lit teacher of my senior year. Far more pleasant were the essays required in my first college-level literature class. I confess to confusing my professor by sometimes turning in not one, but three or four essays on the same topic. He read one of them at a faculty function attended by a friend of my mother's which of course got back to her and then to me.

Why didn't he read the essay I believed the better of two is a question that will go forever unanswered. After the final exam that semester, he handed me an envelope. Inside was a card that I wish to this day I had kept safe but lost it to time and circumstance. Two simple words that turned into a motto.

"Keep Writing"

And now, after a thirty-year career in engineering and information technology, I have returned to my roots and my passions. I read. I write. Mostly I write, but I do manage to digest two or three novels or nonfiction works every week.