Mike McQuay

Mike McQuay was born in 1949 and he died too young in 1995.  He worked in a tire factory, but was able to drop that job when his writing career took off.  He wrote under various pseudonyms ranging from the action adventure series Mack Bolan the Executioner to the Bobbsey Twins.  He lived in Oklahoma City and was writer in residence at Central State University in Edmond, OK where he taught writing.  Some of his students have gone on to publish books of their own including Mel Odom, Jerry Van Cook, Gary Jonas, Bill D. Allen, Lynn Murphy (who writes romances as Georgina Gentry, though she was already publishing when she took his class) and others.

Mike is probably best known for his Mathew Swain series, which is basically Raymond Chandler private eye fiction set in a science fiction universe.  They're fun books.  The character was named after Dwight V. Swain, an Oklahoma writer friend of Mike's.  But the novel everyone should read regardless of how one feels about science fiction is Memories, which was a runner up for the Philip K. Dick Award.  Memories is a time travel novel using genetics as the method of going back through time.  A man from the future has taken over Napoleon Bonaparte and refuses to return to his own time, so a psychiatrist with an ancestor who was close to the little dictator is recruited to try to save the fabric of time.  The research was impeccable and the emotion McQuay was able to wring out of the characters really pushes this novel so it transcends genre and stands as an excellent work of literature no matter how you slice it.  The novel is out of print, but easy to find used and it is well worth your time to read.