Chapman staffer rolls back time to summer of ’74 in new novel, ‘Training Wheels’

By day Mike Stringer is the director of corporate and foundation relations at Chapman University, helping to raise valuable support for the University. But in his spare time, Stringer recently wrapped up another accomplishment – the publication of his first novel, Training Wheels.

The novel is a coming-of-age story set in the summer of ’74, against the backdrop of Watergate, mega rock stars and the free-love movement. Stringer says the novel is not autobiographical but does revisit a time he considers extraordinary.

“I started Training Wheels as an exploration into my past and the crazy summer I turned 15. It wasn’t long before I experimented with multiple ‘what if’ scenarios, and that’s when the story evolved into something far more fictionalized, and hopefully more amusing and compelling. I know readers will try to separate fact from fiction, and draw conclusions, but my family understands that I took great artistic license purely for the sake of entertainment,” Stringer says.

The book is available through Martin Sisters Publishing or Amazon.com.