About the Author

Michelle Grogan, also known as Shelly, was born in a hospital in La Mesa, California, and spent her first year in El Cajon, California. When her father got a job on the East Coast, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Michelle lived there for about five years. It was also there that she wrote her first short story - "The Fox  and the Hare." It was a few paragraphs about a fox catching a hare. Doesn't sound particularly pleasant, but it was a realistically depicted account, and the animals weren't personified.

      

When Michelle was six years old, her family moved to College Park, Maryland. They stayed there for a few months, and Michelle was given the lead part in a Christmas play put on by the whole school. That was her first experience in acting, and she loved it.

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Shortly afterward, her family stayed for a short time in Virginia, then they moved to El Cerrito, California. They rented a house in one neighborhood for a few months, then later bought a house in another neighborhood. That is where Michelle lived until she graduated from high school in 1985. That is also where Michelle did the bulk of her early writing.

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She'd ridden horses throughout her life, but it was on her tenth birthday that she was given her first horse. Although she lived in the suburbs, her mother took her and her brother to the riding stable every day to take care of the horses and ride. It was there that Shelly gained most of her riding skills. It was also there that she had her first serious riding incident.    

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I was riding around the arena bareback, waiting for my mother to get done with what she was doing in the barn. There was construction going on around the outside of the arena - the stable owners were having a track installed.  Frosty was a little bit nervous around the big machinery, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.

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Suddenly, with no warning, one of the backhoes screeched. Frosty, startled by the sound, bolted. It wasn't a gentle lope. It was an all-out run. Although I pulled back on the reins and yelled at Frosty to stop, he didn't. I could feel myself losing my balance. I knew that the ground at the far end of the arena was rocky, so I decided to fall off then instead of taking the chances of falling on a rock. The next thing I remembered, I was lying in the back of the car with a kid watching over me. My mother got the horses bedded down and fed for the night, then came out and drove me to the Emergency Room. Although I hadn't been wearing a helmet (we didn't know about helmets at that time) and I'd fallen on my face, the only real damage that I had was a black eye that lasted for two years before finally fading away.

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While living in El Cerrito, the family dog died of old age, and Michelle adopted a rescue puppy. Sox. They were inseperable.

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Michelle had a variety of jobs. Not wanting to go the "Fast Food" route, she chose different opportunities that were open to teen-agers. She had a dog-walking job, then later, worked for a local veterinarian.

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After graduating from high school, Michelle moved to San Diego, California, where she worked as a Payroll Clerk in the beautiful beach town of La Jolla. During her lunch breaks, she rode her bike all over La Jolla. During her shorter breaks, she wrote short stories.

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Michelle lived in San Diego with a couple of friends from her church and took a few night classes at the local community college. During that time, her parents moved to a horse property in El Sobrante, California, so Michelle moved back and bought a horse. She hadn't been able to keep her dog with her in San Diego, and they'd missed each other terribly. At that point, Michelle vowed to never again move to where she couldn't take her dog. It was a vow that she was able to keep.

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She lived at home and worked for a pet-sitting company in El Sobrante in which she took care of people's pets in their homes while they were away on vacation. Her mother started a pony party business where she gave cart rides, pony rides, and ran a petting farm, both on the property and away. Michelle assisted her with that business while attending a community college in El Portal. 

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At the community college, she took Drama and Speech classes and performed in one of the musicals that the college produced yearly for the general public. During one summer, she was one of the counselors in a children's summer production.

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Michelle was in her early twenties when she went up to northern California to work on a family-run ranch. It was there that she learned to herd cattle, participated in cattle branding, fixed barbed wire fences, and engaged in many other ranching activities. During the winter, when there was no work to be done of the ranch, she returned home to El Sobrante, then went up again for the summer. Although she had to leave her horse at home, she was allowed to take her dog.

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After her ranching days were over, she went back to El Sobrante, continued to help with the petting farm, and got a job as a veterinarian's assistant. It was there that she met Michael, the man who would later become her husband. She worked at the veterinarian's office for a while longer, then when she and Michael decided to get married, she realized that she needed more income. She got a job as a courier.

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She and her husband first lived in Concord, California, moved to the small bedroom community of Clyde, then finally ended up in a condominium in another part of Concord. After a couple of car accidents, Michelle left the courier company. She had trouble finding work and took short-lived jobs such as being a sandwich-maker for Togo's and a pet groomer, then finally got a full-time position as a data entry clerk where she learned a lot about word-processing on computers. She continued helping with the petting farm and pony rides for her mother on weekends.

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It was shortly after she got married that she discovered Christian Fiction. After reading several novels, her writing changed dramatically. She began to write Christian novels set in small towns and on ranches. She incorporated many of her horse and spiritual experiences in her books.

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She had finished one series, but hadn't tried publishing anything, when her first child, Zack, was born. She became a stay-at-home mom and started on another series. By that time, Michael had completed his training as an EMT. He moved to Flint, Michigan, to further his training to become a Paramedic. A few months later, after he found a place to live and got a job, he sent for Michelle and Zack. They lived there until Michael finished his training, then they moved to Eureka, California, where Michael got a job as a Paramedic. Later, he got a better-paying job in San Francisco so they moved to El Sobrante and rented a small house a few blocks away from where Michelle's parents lived. Michelle continued to write, take care of Zack, and even work at the petting farm and pony rides, either taking Zack with her or leaving him with his grandpa. Eventually, Mike stopped working as a Paramedic and worked in an in-house blueprinting shop for an engineering firm.

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Cori, Michelle's only daughter, was born while they were living there. When the landlord sold the house to someone else, another house, right next door to Michelle's parents' place, had opened up and the small family moved in. They lived comfortably enough in the two-bedroom house until their third child, Trevor, came along. Michelle's parents replaced one of their four large horse paddocks with a four-bedroom manufactured house and Michael, Michelle, and their three kids - all under the age of seven - moved in.

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Michelle wrote, homeschooled all three of the kids, and continued working with the petting farm and pony rides, and sometimes assisted with riding lessons. That went on until Michael lost his job due to downsizing. Michelle's parents decided to move to Eugene, Oregon. They bought a 20-acre property with two houses on it, and both families moved up there in December of 2004 with the three kids, aged 4, 7, and 9.

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Michelle continued to write. By the time she decided to try to publish one of her manuscripts, she had more than seventy to choose from. She found a publishing company and submitted "Looking for a Window." It was published in December of 2017. For the next three years, she learned a lot about editing, marketing, and other things that every writer in the 21st century should know, and by 2021, she was able to bring the other books to life.

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