Michael Blumlein, M.D. is a fiction writer and a physician. Born and raised in San Francisco, he has been a physician for more than thirty years, much of that time caring for the poor and indigent. With a number of novels to his credit, his writing is in or near the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. His novels include The Healer, The Movement of Mountains and X, Y. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award, his short stories have been collected in numerous anthologies and published in Interzone and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His early stories were collected in The Brains of Rats. In addition, he’s written a commissioned stage play and the narrative of an award-winning independent film.