COBLEY, Michael
Mike Cobley was born in Leicester, 1959, to an English father and a Scottish mother, the kind of bedrock contrast which, he says, still serves to highlight the value of differences and the strength that comes from their combination.
After his family spent a few years in Australia, he went to school in Clydebank, followed by the University of Strathclyde (to study engineering,) where he ended up writing a scurrilous column of polemic for the student newspaper. From that small seed the urge to tell stories of a fabulous nature unfolded and he began to write with a serious intention in 1986.
After getting several short stories published in various small press SF magazines, he made his first professional sale was to the Other Edens anthology in 1988, followed by more small press appearances leading to another pro-sale to Interzone in 1992. 
After a few more years writing shorts and a couple of abortive novels, he was introduced to John Parker, then of MBA Literary Agents, who agreed to take him on as a client.
Soon after that came Mike’s first novel sale, the Shadowkings Trilogy, published by Simon & Schuster between 2001 and 2005. A new trilogy, going under the collective title of Humanity’s Fire, was sold to Orbit Books with the first volume, Seeds Of Earth, due to appear in March 2009. Also, in the last year his anti-Iraq war short story, Weapon Of Choice, appeared in the UK small press magazine, Midnight Street, while another story, Black Fragmentaria, has been accepted for publication by PS Publishing’s acclaimed Postscripts Magazine.
After delivering the next two Humanity’s Fire volumes, The Orphaned Worlds and The Ascendant Stars, Mike has many other SF ideas to explore in short stories, novels, and proposals for small and big screen.