About the Author: Michelle Richmond

Thank you for stopping by my Goodreads page! I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, the middle of three sisters. After attending the University of Alabama, I worked a number of odd jobs around the South before enrolling in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Miami. From Miami I moved to New York City, and finally to San Francisco with my husband in 1999. I've published four novels, including The Year of Fog, and two story collections. My new novel, THE MARRIAGE PACT, will be out in July.

THE MARRIAGE PACT is a psychological thriller about a young professional couple who get caught up in a worldwide marriage cult that promises them a happy, lasting marriage. When I set out to write The Marriage Pact, I wanted to do something I hadn't tried before. I had to let go of all of my notions of "what would I do?" and just let the characters be themselves and get into all kinds of trouble.

If your book club is reading THE MARRIAGE PACT, you can download The Pact party guide at http://themarriagepact.net.

I like to write about ordinary people in crisis: a kidnapping (The Year of Fog), a hostage situation (Golden State), a decades-old murder that became a true crime sensation (No One You Know), and now THE MARRIAGE PACT. I enjoy pushing characters past the limits of everyday life, seeing how they react to trauma and, in the case of THE MARRIAGE PACT, to a threat much bigger and more powerful than themselves. One of the things I find challenging and exciting about writing fiction is allowing my characters to act in questionable ways that make sense to them at the moment. Characters, like children, need the freedom to make their own bad decisions.

My novels are often set in San Francisco and the Bay Area, where I've made my home, but my stories and novels also take inspiration from many of the places I've lived and traveled. My story collection HUM (2014) features Americans caught up in espionage, surveillance, and all manner of marital crimes.

If you love discovering new books, or if you've enjoyed any of my books, I'd love to send you my author newsletter! It includes notes on what I'm reading, dispatches from the writing life, and book giveaways. You can sign up for the newsletter at http://michellerichmond.com.

Back story: I knew I wanted to be a writer for almost as long as I can remember, way back when I was a kid growing up in Alabama. I used to write skits to perform for my parents with my two sisters. After graduating from a huge public school in downtown Mobile, I studied journalism and creative writing at the University of Alabama, then worked in advertising, as well as in restaurants and a tanning salon (!) for a few years before enrolling in an MFA program in creative writing. I bounced around the South for a while and lived in New York City for a couple of years, with a brief work stint in Beijing, before settling in Northern California in 1999. I've been writing here in the fog ever since.

My first book, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress was a short story collection that I wrote during my years waitressing and doing other odd jobs in Knoxville and Atlanta. My first novel, Dream of the Blue Room, was inspired by my time in Beijing. My second novel, The Year of Fog, gathered many rejections before being acquired by a young editor at Bantam. The Year of Fog was a life-changing book in that in allowed me to connect with readers in ways I'd never quite imagined, and it gave me the freedom to pursue writing full time. Writing is my dream job. It's a job I do alone in a quiet room, but because it allows me to connect with readers, it never feels lonely.