Michael Siemsen Books in Order

Michael Siemsen grew up in Venice, California, the son of a Vietnam veteran who later became a police officer. His family history included military service across several generations, and Siemsen followed that path for a time himself.

Before fiction became his full-time work, he was drawn to performing arts and attended the Alexander Hamilton Academy in Los Angeles. He has described school as a mixed experience, but English and history gave him room to read, argue, and make up stories.

After high school, Siemsen served in the U.S. Army as a tracked-vehicle operator. When he returned to civilian life, he began writing short stories and screenplays, while also directing short films and music videos.

Stories kept pulling him back.

In the late 1990s, he moved to Northern California, where he met his future wife, Ana. For more than a decade, he also worked in information technology, fitting writing around demanding jobs and long hours at a computer.

That changed with The Dig. Siemsen independently released the novel in early 2011, and its readership grew sharply the following year. He left his IT work in 2012 to focus on writing.

A new desk job, at last.

His books often begin with a clean, high-concept problem and then follow the human cost. In The Dig, Matt Turner can sense the emotional history left on objects by previous owners, a gift that makes him useful and deeply vulnerable. The Opal and Return continue Matt's adventures through buried artifacts, old mysteries, and the trouble that comes when a psychic ability can no longer stay private.

Siemsen also moves comfortably into darker supernatural territory. A Warm Place to Call Home follows Frederick, a body-hopping demon whose pursuit of a human life gets messier than expected, while The Many Lives of Samuel Beauchamp centers on another displaced consciousness trying to understand what he is. In the standalone Exigency, a scientific mission to a distant world turns into a survival story when its observers are forced down onto a dangerous alien planet.

Across those different settings, he returns to questions of identity, memory, responsibility, and what people do when they are given power they never asked for. The setups may involve psychometry, possession, or space travel, but the characters still have to make choices with real consequences.

Siemsen lives near California's San Joaquin River Delta with Ana, their children, and a busy household that includes dogs, a cat, and a fish or two. His work ranges from full novels to short fiction, but it consistently favors big speculative ideas, brisk momentum, and characters who are in over their heads.