About the Author – Michael J. Meraw

How it all began —Nature’s inspirations

The vision began here—kayaking Kingdom Lake, British Columbia, Canada—when a jagged rock rose from the water like an ancient Sphinx, and I named it Maalik, Chief of the Dark Angels. Its malformed bite, grim malocclusion, seeping pus and blood—legs sinking into the depths—hulking, primeval, watching. The rock loomed, its jagged snout jutting into the water, rough yet unmistakable: a prehistoric sentinel, a beast carved from the bones of the world, etched into the Cascade Mountains along the Pacific Ring of Fire. From there, The Lost World of Mythoamphibia was born.

Michael J. Meraw (Major, Retired), CD, SCPM (Stanford), BComm, AGDM, MBA is an author whose work delves into the dark intersection of environmental collapse, existential reckoning, and humanity’s unrelenting impact on the planet and on the vulnerable lives caught inside its systems of power. As a former military pilot and corporate aerospace leader, he brings a hard-won perspective on survival, control, and power dynamics that shapes his exploration of humanity’s tenuous hold on the natural world.

He channels these experiences into narratives that challenge the myth of human dominance. His stories trace what happens when the earth stops forgiving us—when rivers remember, forests reclaim, species speak back, and when human-made systems like cartel camps become closed ecosystems of inherited violence.

As a foreigner now living in Culiacán, Sinaloa, México, he writes from inside the region that shapes Cartel Babies and the everyday lives lived in its shadow. This gives him a ground-level view of México’s “third face” of cartel power—the quiet majority who navigate fear, loyalty, and survival while trying to protect their families inside a system they did not choose.

All of Meraw’s fiction unfolds within the interconnected EᴠØ-Myth Universe™, a transmedia world of games, films, and novels where conscience evolves, creation keeps score, and every species bears the cost of what only one species created.

Recently Completed Works

Cartel Babies (2026) is a literary–commercial psychological thriller set in present-day Sinaloa, México. When a foreign retiree with a long military and aerospace background is abducted on the highway between Culiacán and Mazatlán and forced into a remote mountain cartel camp, he becomes part of the hidden labor engine that feeds northwest México’s synthetic-drug economy and an unwilling witness to a system where violence is inherited, not chosen. As he learns the camp’s rhythms, hierarchies, and the quiet rules that keep some boys alive and erase others, his fight to stay alive collides with a harder question: what happens to those born inside a war they never chose?

A feature-length screenplay adaptation accompanies the novel, developed by the author as a parallel narrative for film and television.

Cartel Babies: Encyclopedia of Knowledge (2026) is a 300-page non-fiction, research companion that contextualizes cartel ecosystems and grounds the novel’s world in field-informed, ethically framed detail. Serves as part of the EvØ-Myth Universe™ transmedia ecosystem.

Let the River Decide (2025) is a literary eco-thriller. In Mike’s and his stepfather Cliff’s alternating first-person voices, a road-north trip to the Arctic Ocean with two dogs intersects with tainted waterways, missing wildlife, and a growing pattern of missing people, echoing northern Elders’ warning that the river keeps score—and when humans push the balance too far, it reclaims.

The Book of Dominatus I is a three-part eco-mythic cycle that weaves eco-horror and literary speculative fiction into a single evolving universe:

• Part I—The Lost World of Mythoamphibia (2023) exists as a fully illustrated novel.
A completed feature-length screenplay adaptation accompanies the illustrated novel, supported by an adaptation package developed for cinematic storytellers such as Guillermo del Toro.

It also anchors DOMINATUS: Scriptures & Rot—a narrative-heavy horror board game rooted in the EᴠØ-Myth Multiverse. On British Columbia’s Ring of Fire, a poisoned lake awakens as witness and judge. Amphibian myth collides with human desecration in a literary horror of conscience.

• Part II—Return to the Source (2024) is a literary eco-myth spanning prehistory and cosmology: as God journeys across the multiverse to confront Her Sisters and the wreckage of their creations, a lone human known only as “The Fourth” faces a choice that will test the limits of conscience and the fate of Neanderthals in Her universe. Return to the Source is the flagship work of the EᴠØ-Myth Universe.

Upcoming / In Development

• Part III—King Amphibia’s Rise (in development) is a near-future eco-horror: when the fused Toadstone and Mother-of-Pearl birth a regenerative amphibian sovereign, creation’s cure may become a replacement—and humanity must choose stewardship or surrender.

Whether through novels, screenplays, or game design, Michael’s work examines the forces that shape civilization—both the ones we create and the ones we refuse to acknowledge. In an era where humans remain the planet’s most persistent blight, his writing asks an unflinching question: “What happens when nature finally stops forgiving us?”

EᴠØ-Myth™ and EᴠØ-Myth Universe™ are trademarks of Michael J. Meraw.