Michael Hearing lives on a few acres in northeastern Oklahoma with four ferrets, three horses, four dogs, one cat, and one wife. He is a former college-level English teacher and writing tutor, a former newspaper columnist, a published author, and a freelance web copywriter. And he grew up reading Robert E. Howard and Jack London.

Like many other authors, Michael tried his hand at a lot of things before settling on writing, gathering a wide range of experience suffered through and drunk to the (sometimes) bitter lees. He even spent a few years as a PRCA rough-stock contestant (bareback horses and bulls). So he knows what he is writing about.

Though Michael didn’t have a lot of success in rodeo, he was a keen observer and recorder of these rodeo experiences. For instance, he was present (after missing out his bareback horse on that night) in 1979 at the Palestine, Illinois, rodeo. And there on that night, he watched Denny Flynn go 98 points on Steiner’s bull Red Lightning. It’s from a trove of memories like this that Michael has drawn to create his realistic, un-put-down-able rodeo novel Ride On.