Who Am I?

I’m M.G. Herron, author of the Translocator Trilogy and other imaginative stories of science fiction and fantasy.

Born Matthew Gilbert Herron in 1988 in Limestone, Maine, I now live in Austin, TX with my wife, Shelly, and our dog, Elsa.

Books and reading have always been close to my heart. I love epic fantasies and fast-paced adventure novels. The dusty vanilla smell of old paperbacks is my happy place. I’m enamored of words that sing and turns of phrase that make your skin prickle.

I also enjoy being in nature. My soul has a stubborn independent streak that makes climbing mountains one of the most exhilarating things I can think of. I’ve guided rafts on the Yellowstone River and traveled across the world in search of adventures.

My love of writing, particularly the art of writing fiction, grew more slowly. I wrote a couple stories when I was young, but didn’t take writing seriously for a long time. Early on, a lot more effort went into playing video games, learning to code, building websites, goofing off, and just generally trying to find myself.

While I grew up in Delaware, I decided to try something new when it came time to pick a college. I crossed the border into Canada to attend McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario . At first, I chose to study Computer Science—given the websites I’d built and all the time I spent coding in high school, plus my general fascination with technology, it seemed a sensible choice. It only took a couple of miserable semesters before I realized my mistake and switched majors to English Literature.

Sometime around then, the writing bug stirred up in me, and I began writing stories again.

After I graduated in 2009, I spent three years traveling Europe and Asia: Germany, mostly, but also Turkey, Scotland, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and India. I brushed up on my Spanish, and learned a little German. I waited tables for money, and became obsessed with rock climbing. I spent a lot of time finding sandstone towers in the Pfälzerwald (Palatinate Forest) in western Germany. During that time, I also did a few freelance writing projects—some PR stuff for a tours company, a few articles for English-language newspapers, that sort of thing.

By 2012, I had realized that I was ready to get serious about this whole writing thing. I returned to the United States and moved to Austin, TX to become a full-time freelance writer. In a little detour, I became a project manager at a web design agency, where I managed over $1 million in digital projects and spoke at the SXSW Interactive conference. Now I’m out on my own, as a freelance content strategist. Most days, I spend my mornings writing novels, and in the afternoon consult with tech startups and small businesses on copywriting and marketing strategy.

In the fall of 2015, M.G. Herron was born. I published my first novel, The Auriga Project, a sci-fi thriller about a freak teleportation accident and a lost Mayan tribe. Now I have half a dozen books and even more short stories.

In Austin, I occasionally put together events for writers through the local Indie Author Society, an organization for indie authors that I started on Meetup.com.