A Dream Within A Dream: Super Middle Grade Mondays + Giveaway: Author Michael Gibney

Welcome to this week’s Super Middle Grade Mondays Book Blitz presented by Tantrum Books/Month9books!

Today, we get up close and personal with

Michael Gibney

author of The Three Thorns (The Brotherhood and the Shield #1) from Tantrum Books.

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

Michael Gibney began working in restaurants at the age of sixteen and assumed his first sous chef position at twenty-two. He ascended to executive sous chef at Tavern on the Green, where he managed an eighty-person staff. He has worked in the kitchens of Morgans Hotel Group, 10 Downing in Manhattan, and Governor in Brooklyn’s DUMBO, among many others. Over the course of his career, he has had the opportunity to work alongside cooks and chefs from many of the nation’s best restaurants, including Alinea, Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, Daniel, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin, Bouley, Ducasse, Corton, wd~50, and Momofuku.

In addition to his experience in the food service industry, Gibney also holds a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Connect with the Author: Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Describe yourself in three words.

Ambitious. Generous. AnimalLover.

Describe your book in three words.

Exciting. Dark. Original.

Tell us about your day job.

Landlord & Full Time Writer.

Which writers inspire you?

Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Stephen King, John Grisham, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Peter Benchley, William Peter Blatty, J.M. Barrie & James Herbert. Oh, of course, Shakespeare.

What is your writing process like?

I see visual images in my mind’s eye very vividly. It’s like I mentally walk into a dark movie theatre in my mind, an old 1920’s movie theatre and sit alone in the middle of a gigantic room amidst hundreds of empty seats. The cinema screen is blank (white) until the projector begins to play a movie. It is the movie that would entertain, thrill and touch me emotionally and I simply write down what I see.

What are you reading right now?

Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.

Do you have an author crush?

No. Not really. Haha. Stephenie Meyer, maybe? Yeah, I’ll go with Stephenie. Which is weird because I don’t like the mainstream.

Three brothers born to a once powerful King were abandoned at birth and cast out into the old world as orphans – alone and unaware of the other’s existence or their royal heritage.

In the new world, by order of the false King, three of the most lethal assassins are sent to kill the children before they come of age and avenge their father’s throne.

But when the brothers find one another, Benjamin, Tommy and Sebastian must resist the temptation of magic and power if they are to defeat the unspeakable evil that has threatened them since birth.

The Three Thorns is book one in an exciting children’s fantasy series called The Brotherhood and the Shield from debut author Michael Gibney.