Local Author Book Meet and Greet: Matthew Roundo

Abou the author: Matt wrote his first story, “The Elephant and the Cheese,” at age eight—the first time he’d filled an entire page. That moment sparked his desire to become a writer.

He gravitated early toward science fiction, fantasy, and horror. After discovering Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” in grade school, he reread it constantly, soon moving on to classics like Dune, The Lord of the Rings, and Foundation. As a kid, he often imagined his bicycle was Shadowfax and himself Gandalf racing to Minas Tirith—much to the confusion of those around him.

His story “Alan Smithee Lives in Hell” placed second in the 1997 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Contest. In 1998, he attended the Odyssey workshop, which led to his first sale, “Black Boxes,” in Absolute Magnitude. In 2002, he won a Phobos Award for “Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown,” and in 2008, he was a winner in the Writers of the Future Contest. He has since published in various magazines. Matt lives in Nebraska. He’s husked corn only once and never detasseled, so he insists he’s not a hick.

About the book: Welcome to Petra. It is the ultimate prison. Inmates from all of Ported Space are dumped there, forgotten, and left to survive however they can. Hope dies. Escape is impossible.Disillusioned war hero Kane Pythen comes to Petra on a fact-finding mission, but gets caught in an uprising that threatens to expose a shattering secret. And Rolf Ankledge, Petra’s ruthless warden, will stop at nothing to keep it from reaching Ported Space. If Kane involves himself, he risks losing everything he has. If he does nothing, he betrays the last shreds of his ideals. The prison break of the millennium is on. Now Kane must race against time and vicious forces from all over Petra if he ever wants to see his wife and daughter again. Petra is the first book in The Prison World Revolt series.