Mike C. Erickson grew up 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 history teacher, academic decathlon coach, and on occasion, as a community college instructor in the Sacramento area. Mike and his wife Trudy, have two grown sons and a grandson born soon after this novel is published. When not in Hawaii or another exotic locale, they live in Gold River, California. This is his first novel.

The award winning novel, Pianist in a Bordello, garnered a nod by the Northern California Publishers and Authors for third place in General Fiction. It was also awarded two first places in fiction and humor by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. In addition, PIAB was re named as a recipient of the coveted BRAG awards. Publishers Weekly, Red City Reviews and Kirkus Reviews all included it in the top ten percent of Indie books that were submitted. The gold standard of book promotion, BookBub recently accepted Pianist in a Bordello for a featured position in their newsletter. BookBub only accepts between ten to fifteen percent of the hundreds of books submitted daily. Pianist in a Bordello was top pick and finalist for Underground Book Reviews, Novel of the Year.