About Mike C. Erickson:
About the Author
Mike C. Erickson’s birth and early education took place in the idyllic college town of Logan, Utah, but because of a twist of fate he graduated from high school in Honolulu. He left Hawaii brimming with aloha and enrolled at Utah State, where he was awarded two degrees and self-proclaimed minor intellectual status, which was of dubious value when the US Army invited him to vacation in South-East Asia. Ten days after leaving Vietnam, he began decades of dispensing pearls of wisdom as a high school teacher and, on occasion as a community college history instructor in suburban Sacramento. Mike and his wife Trudy, have two grown sons and a grandson born just after this novel was published. When not in Hawaii or some other exotic locale, they live in Gold River, California. This is his first novel.
What inspires you to write?
Sometime during the eighties I wrote (long hand on legal pad) what became most of Chapter One of PIANIST IN A BORDELLO. Just a few years ago I rediscovered this masterpiece when searching old files and I liked it even better than when I first wrote it. It is a fictional autobiography of Richard Milous Nixon Youngblood, who was born in a hippy commune on election day, 1968 and his mother, in an act of vengeance against the her absent husband, named him after the newly elected President.
When I thought my book was finished about three years ago, I sent out multiple queries to multiple agents. After many rejections, I got hooked up with Renni Browne and Shannon Roberts of the The Editorial Department. In the process of content editing, they taught me the fine art of writing fiction as opposed to just writing. During this period I became increasing knowledgeable about self –publishing and at the end of 2014, I proclaimed my book finished at last. It has been a joyful journey. My main inspiration in writing this novel was entertaining myself with my own words, that are often funny and sometimes meaningful.
Tell us about your writing process.
I had a vague idea of where I was going with my story, but the how I got there was mainly a surprise, even to me. My method of meandering plot development probably requires more editing than those who have a road map, but the travels I like best are those that leave the main highway and discover something that is absent from the guide book.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
My characters are some of my best friends. I talk to them, related to them, and on one occasion I dreamed about them.
What advice would you give other writers?
It may be presumptuous of me to give advice to anyone after completing just one book. If I had one bit of advice, write a story that is meaningful and entertaining to you. Although, while writing, you should occasionally think about your potential audience, remember you are part of that audience.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
After I went through over two years of content editing, I knew I had good book and considered sending the new and improved version to agents and directly to publishers. However, increasing I was attracted to self-publishing and the control it has given me to promote my book. Like writing, marketing can also be a very creative process especially if you have time and a budget.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
The huge profits of Amazon and all of the other minor players have done a fantastic job of increasing the supply of reading material, with only a minuscule increase in demand. This is good for the consumer who can read until their eyes turn into stone for a tiny commitment of dinero to their plastic cards. It is good for Amazon, good for consumers, but not good for authors who have to find a non-monetary incentive for continuing to write. I have that incentive mainly because I don’t have to make a living at it and I love the phrases that pop out as I click the keyboard of my digital pen. However, I feel so sorry to the multitudes of young, talented, writers who are trying, or on a daily basis harboring dreams of making a living in this glorious pursuit. The future of publishing is bright from the consumer point of view and there will be always be a plethora of material to publish. Most authors will continue to write because they enjoy it and the enlightenment it has brought to their readers.
What do you use?: Professional Cover Designer
What genres do you write?: Fiction: Humor and Satire
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Mike C. Erickson Home Page Link
Link To Mike C. Erickson Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit, to allow you, the reader, to hear the author in their own voice.
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