Michael Pellegrini was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington.
In the mid-sixties, believing that the world might soon be reduced to radioactive cinders, his parents moved the family to New Zealand where they lived for two years.
Moving back to the United States, Pellegrini played in several rock bands. During this period, he attended and worked at several rock festivals, including 
Sky River III. He also worked security at a number of rock concerts, and has the distinguishment of having mistakenly thrown the rock group Quicksilver out of their own concert. Later, Pellegrini managed and promoted the country-rock bands Stir Crazy and Kid Rodeo, and worked for a recording studio.
Disillusioned with music, Pellegrini started a new career working as a union organizer, and later as a business rep with a state employee union. He conducted organizing campaigns, chaired contract negotiations, coordinated strikes, filed unfair labor practice charges, unit determination and representation petitions, represented members in grievances and arbitrations as well as conducted classification and compensation studies.
In the late 80’s, he promoted into a job with the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries. As the Employment Standards Program Manager, he directed the aggressive enforcement of the state minimum wage and overtime laws, the child labor laws and other similar statutes. While at L&I, he conceived and directed the investigation of off the clock work by Nordstrom Inc. employees. He was responsible for authoring the department’s order against Nordstrom. This case resulted in a back-pay settlement of over $15 million.
In the early 90’s, he left his state job to write novel-length fiction, while working as a cab driver, newspaper reporter, and as a registered longshoreman.
An avid hiker, he spends as much time in the mountains as he can.