MB Panichi

It’s a challenge to write a “bio” page. What do I tell, and what’s interesting to the people who read my books?

Guess I’ll keep to the basics, and the story of how I ended up being a published author.

I grew up in a smallish town in the northern half of the state of Minnesota, where iron mining is the primary economic driver. I was a writer early on and was encouraged by a family friend who was an English teacher. I’d ride my bike to see him in the summer and bring him my notebooks, and he’d teach me to “show, not tell,” and put up with my sci-fi imagination.

My mom loved words and reading. My best memories of her are around books. I got my obsessive reading habits from her, though my idea of interesting subject matter was always far removed from hers.

I’ve been a sci-fi fan all my life. It was mostly all I read. I’ve obsessed on Star Wars since it came out in 1977. My writing often reflected my reading. I wrote what I read, from Star Wars to romance, to the Bionic Woman. I created little stories and endless amounts of random scenes and characters and situations. My imagination was always running away with me.

I never wrote with the intention of being published. I just wrote because it was something I did. I didn’t finish anything novel-length until I was much older, and at that point it was fan fiction I was writing and obsessing on — Deep Space Nine and Babylon Five. The Babylon Five story was the first lesbian fiction I’d ever written. I think of that story as my internal coming out.

Some years later, my friend Jessie Chandler (Author of the Shay O’Hanlon mystery series) talked me into taking a Queer Fiction Writing class at the Loft in Minneapolis, taught by renowned author Lori L. Lake.

Lori and Jessie encouraged me to write and helped me believe I could actually be published. They talked me into going to my first Golden Crown Literary Society conference, where I was overwhelmed by meeting so many other authors and readers — it was the most amazing thing I’d ever experienced.

While I was at GCLS, I got mentored by Pol Robinson and Fran Heckrotte. Fran and I continued to work together on the manuscript for “Saving Morgan.” Her help was invaluable — I think I learned more in those few months than I ever had about writing and editing.

Eventually, Bella Books accepted the manuscript and “Saving Morgan” was released in 2013. The great women at Bella were willing to take a chance on me again a year later, and “Running Toward Home” released in May of 2014. Since then, they’ve also published “Choosing Love” and “Blood and Roses.”

It’s been a great adventure and continues to be a challenging journey. Stay tuned for more of the story!