Author Michael Dutton

Having migrated from South Jersey with my wife, Carol, and our daughters, Meg and Kate, nearly seventeen years ago, we remain in Newport, Rhode Island, firmly anchored in our adopted home town. The exotic specimens of trees, which sea captains brought to the island (Aquidneck) throughout the years, are constant sources of fascination, frequent implants in my works of fiction.

I began writing fiction when I was eleven years old. The notion - "suspension of disbelief" - was utterly foreign.

At Stockton State College, I acquired a degree in literature (graduating summa cum laude - perhaps at the top of my class, though I never bothered to find out). Afterwards I attended Penn State University in State College, PA, pursuing a degree in comparative literature (but, alas[!] ran out of funds).

I so loved driving through the "Seven Mountains" outside of State College that I mention it in Finding Christmasville.

For twenty years I was employed as a controller/director in hotels and casinos(including eight years with the Trump Organization in Atlantic City and four years at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut).

For several years, I winged it as a consultant with long-range clients - the Atlantis property on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, a restaurant chain in Atlanta, GA, etc. OK - enough.

In 2004 I started writing fiction again, steadfast in my determination to complete my first novel, Christmasville. The project required four years, writing the novel between 4:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M. every morning, driving afterwards (on weekdays) the seventy-one miles to a hotel outside of Boston, where I was a hotel controller. The second novel of the trilogy, Finding Christmasville, was released for publication in December of 2012. I expect the final volume of the Christmasville Trilogy, tentatively titled Saving Christmasville, to be published by the fall of 2014. In addition to the three volumes which comprise the trilogy, a fourth book, A Brief Memoir of Christmasville, and alluded to in Finding Christmasville, will also be published shortly thereafter. The Memoir reveals Lars Neilson's nostalgic remembrances of a town and culture wholly entrenched in the Main Street traditions and values that preceded malls, Internet and global economies.