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• She also grew up in bars and honky-tonks, singing country and rock-n-roll tunes in her father’s cover bands. Consequently, she can probably beat you in a game of darts or pool. She’s had a lot of practice.
   

• She started writing (terrible) stories like this one with push pencils and stapled card stock, then moved on to a Royal electric typewriter, then a Commodore 64 for better editing capabilities, then took one of the first laptops for a test drive so she could write outside under a shade tree (with an extension cord stretched across the lawn), until finally she built her first PC (nicknamed Speedy Reliable), then embarked into Mac territory and never looked back.
   

• If she hadn’t become an author, her secondary dreams were to become an animal trainer for TV and film, or a teacher.
   

• She is a tech junkie. She soldered her first circuit board at age 9. She built her first computer at age 13. She started coding and designing websites in 1997. (Speak HTML to me.) She is an avid gamer and loves to test out the latest technology.
   

• She took a year off college to serve in the AmeriCorps, teaching underprivileged youth in inner-city Chicago.
   

• She ultimately became a college dropout, preferring to teach herself, pursue the arts, and be her own boss.
   

• She is a small business entrepreneur who started her first side business at 19 and was running her first brick-and-mortar corporation full-time by the age of 24.
   

• She spent many years designing, programming, and editing websites for a variety of clients, as well as directing social media. For over five years, M.G. was the owner and director of the hugely popular website YABooksCentral.com, a social network for YA (and kids!) book lovers.
   

• Chosen as a member of Fiesta Movement, she was one of the very first social media influencers. Ford Motor Company gave her a free car and she traveled the US documenting her adventures on YouTube.
   

• She finished her first full novel in 2006, then proceeded to edit it for the next 3 years while learning the craft. That book, an epic fantasy, is still on her hard drive and may never see the light of day.
   

• She wrote the first ALEX WAYFARE draft in only 3 months. The second book in the series took her 2 years. The third book may even take longer…
   

• She signed with her literary agent, Holly Root, in 2012 and got her first publishing contract in 2013.
   

• She is a foster and adoption advocate. Ask her about fostering/adoption if you’re interested in learning about the process.
   

• She loves to explore abandoned and forgotten places and buildings (urban exploring in Detroit, as well as rural exploring farms and factories) because it makes her feel like she’s time traveling.
   

• Her favorite place to camp is a remote island in the middle of Lake Michigan where storms roll in, where coyotes howl, where peace is found.
   

• She was once attacked by a legion of Asian carp and lived to tell the tale. (Like this.)
   

• M.G. stands for Mandy Genese (pronounced juh-neese).
   

• She now lives outside Detroit, Michigan with her husband and son, their dog, Sunny, and their two cats, Dexter and Chester.