Michael D. Meloans Erzählungen sind in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly, Larry Flynt's Chic und in vielen Anthologien erschienen. Er war Interviewpartner in den Dokumentarfilmen Bukowski: Born Into This und Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. Gemeinsam mit Joe Frank verfasste er eine Reihe von Hörspielen, die über das National Public Radio ausgestrahlt wurden. Für seine Kurzgeschichte „The Cutting Edge“, die auf Wired erschienen ist, wurden die Filmrechte gesichert. Zusammen mit seinem Bruder Steven schrieb er den Roman The Shroud. Viele Jahre lang war er als Software-Ingenieur tätig.
My mailbox contained a surprise a week or so ago: a novella (in a bilingual edition of German and English!) by Michael Meloan that is one of the most satisfying reading experiences I’ve had in recent years, in part because it handles a famous writer (Charles Bukowski) being one of its major characters with nonchalant deftness. It’s hard to classify Meloan’s slightly picaresque story, which is one of the things that makes it such a pleasure to read. Protagonist, Ralph Hargraves, is the first computer programmer narrator that I’ve ever found complex enough to care about. Meloan has a gift for writing unapologetically masculine prose that isn’t worried about how well it looks in the mirror. It’s flavorful without being exotic, and it doesn’t hurt that he has a fine ear for dialogue. He also keeps the backdrop of specific neighborhoods and locales in Los Angeles well in focus as the characters bicker, quarrel, and placate one another.
