Michael Attiani is a second generation Italian-American. Three of his grandparents were born in Italy, and one was born to recent Italian immigrants in the coal mining region of western Pennsylvania. If he tried, Michael could probably trace his Italian lineage back to Romulus and Remus, and possibly to Adam and Eve because Italians believe the Garden of Eden had to be somewhere in Italy because Italy is Heaven on Earth.

His grandparents all ended up in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, settled in Philadelphia, and stayed there for the remainder of their days. Michael was born and raised in this City of Brotherly Love. After attending local public schools, he ended up where most Italians do: Catholic school. He endured that excruciating form of purgatory from 8th grade through college graduation, shrewdly compacting an entire lifetime of Catholic obligation into the first twenty years of his life. Once he was paroled from academia, he spent three decades pursuing a career in commercial real estate and continues to do so today.

Michael somehow convinced a beautiful woman to marry him and produce two sons. Then they added four dogs because two boys don’t produce enough mayhem and mess on their own. In addition to his family and career, Michael enjoys spending as much time as possible with his friends, writing, drawing, skiing, traveling and doing pretty much anything with cars. As an enthusiastic member of the automotive community, he enjoys driving on racetracks, slaloming between orange cones in otherwise empty parking lots, and attending car events around the globe.

Although most of his family stayed rooted in Philadelphia, Michael extricated his family from those familiar confines and settled a couple thousand miles west, in Idaho. They lingered there for nearly a dozen years until returning to Philadelphia, because there’s no place like home, and truly, there is nowhere like Philadelphia. Learn more about Michael and his writing at www.sonnysvendetta.com.