Look to the skies.America has fallen to a devastating plague. What remains of the population huddles in small enclaves around the country-many of them run by brutal strongmen.Hope comes unbidden in the form of a masked liberator calling himself Captain Dark Eagle, who rides the night skies in a black hot air balloon. Some think him insane. Others consider him a traitor. And still others hunt him, seeking vengeance.But when he tries to avert a miniature war brewing between two rival Midwestern towns, he discovers a web of secrets and schemes that could cost thousands of lives, including his. Now Captain Dark Eagle must decide what price he will pay to bring back his lost America…or if there is anything left to save. Matt wrote his first story-"The Elephant and the Cheese"-when he was eight years old. It was the first time he had ever filled an entire page with writing. To his young mind, that seemed like a major accomplishment. It occurred to him shortly thereafter that writing stories was what he wanted to do with his life.Matt gravitated to science fiction, fantasy, and horror at an early age, too. He discovered Ray Bradbury's "The Fog Horn" in a grade school reader, and read it over and over whenever he got bored in class. (Needless to say, he read it a lot.) Other classics soon followed-Dune and Lord of the Rings and Foundation, the usual suspects. As a boy, he often pretended his bicycle was Shadowfax, and that he was Gandalf, riding like mad for Minas Tirith. Yeah, he was that kind of kid. Half the time, his family and friends didn't know what the hell he was talking about.Matt's story "Alan Smithee Lives in Hell" placed second in the 1997 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Contest. In 1998, he attended Odyssey. The workshop led directly to his first sale-"Black Boxes," in Absolute Magnitude. In 2002, Matt won a Phobos Award for "Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown." He was a 2008 winner in the Writers of the Future Contest. He has since continued to publish in various magazines.Matt lives in Nebraska. He has husked corn only once in his life, and has never been detasseling, so he insists he is not a hick.
