Michael D. Sheimo

About the Author

When I was elementary school age, living in Lake Mills, Iowa, I remember hearing grandmother, Eda Nash tell of her two famous cousins. One was a man who had written a play for Broadway in New York. The other was a man living in California who had written several books. I knew what New York was and what a play was but had no idea what Broadway was about.

The man was Thomas Heggen author of the Tony Award winning play “Mr. Roberts,” produced by Josh Logan. The other cousin was a man born in Lake Mills, Iowa, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Wallace Stegner. He was an author of several books and also taught writing at Stanford University. That puts me way down the genetic shirt tail, down by the socks. But a sort of lineage just the same.

That lineage made me curious, although it wasn’t until high school and college that I did much acting or writing. I attended college at Winona State College in Winona, Minnesota as an English major with a speech minor. English majors are required to do a lot of reading and writing. All the theatre work was extra-curricular at that time. Starting my second year at college I was always in a play and came back a year after graduating as a graduate asst. (teaching beginning public speaking) to do more acting. I also taught English at the Winona Junior High School. I was still teaching there when in the summer of 1970, I decided to go to Fairbanks, Alaska to visit friends. More about that later.

After Winona, I came to Minneapolis where I did some work for Bloomington Civic Theatre. Also played a supporting lead as Lieutenant Seymore in “Billy Budd” at The Cricket Theatre. Ended my theatrical career with an improve group in Minneapolis, Minnesota called “The Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop.”

In September of 1976, I left theatre aspirations and got married to the wonderful Linda. We moved to Cupertino, CA where I eventually went to work as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. After a successful three years in sales I was promoted to District Manager and we were moved back to the Minneapolis area.

After too much travel as a manager, I left the company and became a stockbroker originally for Merrill Lynch (now Bank of America), then on to Olde Financial Corp. (now Ameriprise, Inc.) In 1987, after a severe stock market correction, I decided to write a book about stock investing.

I sent out 25 query letters describing my book idea and offering sample chapters to those who might be interested. I got back 19 rejections and one phone call. J. Michael Jeffers one of the head publishers and editors of Probus Publishing of Chicago called and was interested in having me write a book.