ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Lewis hails from the former fishing village of Aberporth, west Wales, where his family have farmed for generations.
Having joined a local newspaper straight from school, he proceeded to work as a writer and sub-editor on a number of national titles in London, including The Guardian and The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs.
A lifelong rock and pop music fan, in the 1990s he co-authored biographies on Scott Walker and Syd Barrett, of Pink Floyd.
Mike later worked as The Sunday Telegraph boxing correspondent, covering the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008.
Having returned to his native west Wales to raise a family, he stumbled across the story of William James, a west Wales farmer's son who emigrated to the United States, joined the US Seventh Cavalry and ended up fighting at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Custer's Last Stand) while working for the Fishguard County Echo.
During his research for this lost Victorian soldier, Mike discovered five previously-unknown letters James had dispatched back to his younger brother in Wales from the 1970s US frontier.
These long-forgotten missives – a poignant reminder of the homesickness and displacement experienced by immigrants to the New World - form the framework of his debut novel 'Ghost Rider In The Sky'.
His second novel, The Icarus Ascent: Curse of the Matterhorn – due to be published by Victorina Press in 2024 - is an account of the tragic first ascent of Switzerland’s most famous mountain in July 1865 when four of the conquering British party fell to their deaths on the way down.
A father-of-five, married to Sue, Mike combines his writing career with helping to run Cardigan Amateur Boxing Club and hopes to re-locate to Australia some time in the not-too-distant future to assist one of their sons in opening a new gym in Sydney.
