About Metaphor Publications
Metaphor Publications, Inc. is an independent micro-publishing house specializing in character-driven fantasy fiction set in their original world of Menelon. It was founded by co-authors Alesia Matson and Michael Matson. The company produces novels, short stories, and supplemental content rooted in a richly built fantasy universe featuring classic tropes reimagined through a modern, character-first lens.
Beyond publishing their own fiction, the Matsons run an active blog offering craft advice for writers, literary discussions, and exclusive bonus content for fans of the Menelon world.
Explore our titles: Raven’s Tears and Dead Man’s Trigger — Book 1 and Book 2 of The Raven & Iris series.
Alesia Matson
AKA “AE Matson.” She’s an analog hobbyist waking up in a digital world. Also an author, retired parent, counted cross-stitch enthusiast, aspiring Buddha, cricket fan. Appreciates music, Shakespeare, cats, kindness, the em dash, and the Oxford comma.
She has two grown sons from her first marriage, which started in 1983 and ended in 1993. During those years she was introduced to her third passion, counted cross-stitch, and an over-arching delight in fiber-based art. She met and married Michael in 1994, and moved to California to begin writing professionally. These days, she writes character-driven fantasy fiction from the world of Menelon. Find her on Goodreads!
Michael Matson
Michael Matson is the co-founder of Metaphor Publications, Inc. and the co-author, with his wife Alesia, of What God Has Ordained (The Legacy of Chandar, Book 1) and the romantasy novels Raven’s Tears and Dead Man’s Trigger. He is also the sole author of the military fantasy novella Fire Mission I: Bagédaan.
Few writers come to the page with Michael’s résumé. A United States Air Force veteran, he comes from a commercial fishing family — the third generation to go to sea. He first went out at sixteen months of age, stowed in a bunk in the fo’c’sle so his mother could accompany his father. He worked as a deckhand through childhood and his teens, for his father, grandfather, and uncle, and as an adult owned and operated his own fishing vessel. After that came careers as a lobbyist, truck driver, pastoral counselor, minister, and general contractor — each one a different education in how the world actually works.
He was also a published author at age 12, when a 24-page hand-typed novel became a surprise bestseller among his immediate family — a distinction that has never quite left him.
Each of those lives left something behind. The Air Force gave him discipline and a taste for systems under pressure. The sea gave him patience and an instinct for when weather turns. The counseling and ministry years gave him — as he’d probably put it — an education in the extraordinary variety of ways human beings manage to complicate their own lives. All of it feeds into fiction that takes its characters seriously, because he knows what people actually carry.
These days, retired from construction, Michael channels that accumulated experience into writing and art for the the World of Menelon. He creates colored-pencil illustrations and digital art for the world, including the cover art for Dead Man’s Trigger and What God Has Ordained, and co-manages Metaphor Publications with Alesia from their home in the Pacific Northwest.
He has been telling stories, in one form or another, for as long as anyone can remember — and shows no signs of stopping.
In addition, Metaphor Publications is privileged to have the following excellent professionals involved in the companies:
Marketing: =VACANT=
Legal counsel/Agent: Our legal counsel and literary agent is Paul S. Levine, a California entertainment law attorney with over forty years of experience in the publishing industry. paulslevine.com