Hi, I'm Matt Schumann. I just turned 50. That puts me squarely in the Gen X range. We were a one-parent household growing up; my two sisters, my mom, and I. We weren't poor exactly, but we weren't rich. Lower middle class, I suppose, is where I would place us.

Anyway, if I wanted anything extra, I had to buy it myself. So, I got a job as a paperboy. This was 1981. Walkmen and CD players were just coming out right then, so I saved and bought one of each. The portable CD player was big and clunky and ran on like eight D batteries, if you can believe that. It didn't work very well biking around. It skipped like crazy. So, it became non-portable pretty quickly.

I joined the Columbia House Cassette and CD Club where I could get 12 Cassettes or 8 CD's for just a penny! I did that. Styx: Kilroy Was Here, The Cars: Greatest Hits, and The Ramones: 20 Greatest Hits were my first three CD's. A few years later, after it dawned on me that it was socially untenable to both be a high school student and a paperboy at the same time - it must have been around 1984 - I became first introduced to the world of debt collection and angry telephone voices demanding I pay my Columbia House overdue balance. Everyone shared a phone, so when it rang, and it was a debt collector from Columbia House ... and you didn't answer the phone ... but your mom did (!) ... it was embarrassing.

Flash forward to now and my hateful, hateful, angry war with collectors continues. Only now its with the Big Three Credit Agencies ...

... Jk ... See? Since I'm in Gen X I can still use the Millennial term "Jk" and not feel like a poser. "Poser" ... that's an 80's term. Huh. JK!

Jk. I'm not at war with any credit services so far this year. Yet.

...

anyhoo.

...

I studied at Montana State University's Film School Screenwriting program in Bozeman, Montana. I also studied Creative Writing at MATC in Madison, Wisconsin. In the meantime I helped manage and eventually became the head manager at a second run Movie Theater/Pizza Restaurant/Tap House (the kitchen of which is pictured to the left). For a time we were the "Alamo Drafthouse" of Wisconsin, though not affiliated with them - we developed our business model concurrently, or even before they did. "Great minds think alike" and all that. I can't take too much credit for the concept. My boss came up with it, I just carried out the marching orders. It was such an enjoyable job that I worked there for 16 years. This is The Rivoli Theater in LaCrosse, Wisconsin and it still runs and operates today just as strong as ever. After leaving the Riv in 2015, I decided it was time to get back to writing and hone my skills as deployer of frivolous ellipses.

Temple of the Mermaid had been knocking around in my head since all the way back in 2007 along with other writing projects. The entire trilogy has been hand written and will hopefully be completely published by spring 2021.

Currently I write freelance for an online travel and leisure site: "The Driftless Area Magazine." They're a new outfit but already have a readership north of 65,000. As of 2020 I have several articles written for them and look forward to writing more between the odd mermaid novel.

My hometown is LaCrosse, Wisconsin and I currently live in Madison.
Thanks for reading.

Matt

www.templeofthemermaid.com