avg_rating: 3.43
name: Mike Tanner
about: Mike Tanner was born in 1960 and grew up in Burnaby, B.C. Reading, music, and sports figured heavily in his childhood. Mike read classics, fantasy, and spy stuff, as well as a range of non-fiction. He taught himself guitar at age 15 and was soon performing with bands at high school dances and similar venues. He also took sports seriously, competing at the provincial level in track and field and soccer, and playing several years for the Canadian national men’s field hockey team.Mike started writing songs in his teens―very badly at first, but gradually improving. When he was about 20, he began recording demo tapes, and by his mid-30s he had made three albums of original music, featuring a number of different bands he’d formed and folded over Mike Tanner was born in 1960 and grew up in Burnaby, B.C. Reading, music, and sports figured heavily in his childhood. Mike read classics, fantasy, and spy stuff, as well as a range of non-fiction. He taught himself guitar at age 15 and was soon performing with bands at high school dances and similar venues. He also took sports seriously, competing at the provincial level in track and field and soccer, and playing several years for the Canadian national men’s field hockey team.Mike started writing songs in his teens―very badly at first, but gradually improving. When he was about 20, he began recording demo tapes, and by his mid-30s he had made three albums of original music, featuring a number of different bands he’d formed and folded over the years.Mike began writing prose as a reaction to the restrictions of having to encapsulate an entire subject in a four-minute pop song with rhyming couplets. Mike’s first novel, Acting the Giddy Goat, grew out of those early prose experiments. He enjoys vibrant, muscular writing that’s either very human, like Mordecai Richler’s; intellectually satiric, like Aldous Huxley’s; or pyrotechnically impressive, like Don DeLillo’s.Resurrection Blues (2005) is inspired by Mike’s first months on the road as a professional musician, when, as he says, he began “seeing things for the first time, growing and maturing into a fully fleshed-out adult with my own view of the world and a sense of who I was.” Mike’s advice for young writers is: “Find what’s strange or idiosyncratic about yourself, your life, your experiences. Exaggerate that, use it, work with it, squeeze it for resonance. We’ve got way too much generic entertainment in the world already.” Flat-Out Rock: Ten Great Brands of the '60s (2006), is Mike’s second book with Annick Press. Mike puts readers in the front row as he chooses a defining event in the careers of 10 of the greatest rock artists of that error.On the music front, Mike continues to play regularly with his Toronto band, the Circumstantialists. In addition, he is an English-language instructor and corporate trainer for business communications.Mike enjoys travel, sports, including hockey (and watching the Leafs), the outdoors, live theatre, and the company of good friends. He is married, with a young son who takes up much enjoyable time. Mike and his family live in Toronto, Ontario. ...more