Michael Putegnat grew up on the border in far south Texas in the 1950's and 60's and returned there after college to continue a family tradition in business and started a computer enterprise.  His election to a local college governing board in the 1980's was a perspective jarring event and led him deep into a conflict pitting radical change against old traditions and power. In a quest to understand how people choose to govern themselves, he studied public policy and administration at the Kennedy School, Harvard University in 1993 and 94. Following, he launched a consultancy for business, government, and non-profits interested in structural change.  He is presently an executive with The University of Texas System Administration.

     While it had been a life-long ambition, he wrote his first novel, LAGUNA, in 2005.  He is presently working on his second novel and a non-fiction on reasoning errors.  He is interested in how and why people organize themselves and why so many efforts fail.  He has chosen the story as the medium for his exploration of these themes, partly because it provides greater subtlety and texture to the complexity humans bring to everything they do, and partly because he has long been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Patrick O'Brien, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie.