Mike Blakely is a native Texan and grew up in Wharton County. As a six year old, he was already cowboying on familly ranches. At eight he started playing the guitar. And as a teenager he trained horse, wrote songs and dreamt about writing novels. In high-school he performed in two dance hall bands and caught a honky-tonk fever.

Mike graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism. He wrote lots of magazine and newspaper articles and slowly shifted from journalism to fiction. He's got 15 books on his name, most of them historical novels. They're distributed nationally and to be found in most of the large outlets, including Barnes & Nobles, WalMart and Hastings.

He has been president of Western Writers of America (WWA) and for many years sat on the board of the Ozark Creative Writers, Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Three of Mike’s novels have been finalists for the WWA Spur Award, and one, “Summer of Pearls,” he won the award in 2001, and was also a finalist for the Violet Crown Award given by the Texas Writers League.

During his writing period, he didn't much perform live. But kept writing songs. When his career as a novelist was established, he started concentrating on his music again.

He made a few trips to Nashville to pitch his songs, but he became quickly disenchanted with the major-label country music business, and decided to focus on recording and performing his own songs for his own fans, through the establishment of his independent record label, Swing Rider Records.

With his two careers (novelist and performing songwriter), he doesn't have much time to spare, but he enjoys to ride and train horses on his ranch near Marble Falls (TX). Next to hunting, fishing and travelling.

He is a great and rare talent. An established veteran of the American entertainment industry. In print, over the airwaves and on stage.

You can find out more about him on his website:http://www.mikeblakely.com/ Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.