Featured Interview With Mike Crowl
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Melbourne, but have lived in Dunedin, New Zealand, almost all of my life. I still hold an Australian passport, but the way my birth country is heading, I may have to finally take the plunge and become a NZ citizen!
I’m a writer, musician and composer. A writer of three children’s fantasies, and one nonfiction book about my struggles with a brief medical issue I had. A pianist who prefers above all else to accompany singers, something which I’ve done since I was a teenager, nearly 60 years ago. As well as writing a number of songs, and piano pieces, I’ve written a children’s musical which became the basis for my first published ebook.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I don’t ever remember not being a reader; in fact I used to say, put a cereal packet in front of me and I’ll read it. I’ve been keeping a list of the books I’ve read for several years now, but I’d love to know how many thousands of books I’d read, bought, lost, kept, given away before that.
I started writing as soon as I could write, I think. I still have a story I wrote when I was in my years of school. But I began writing for publication in the early 90s and had a number of articles accepted. I went on to write a weekly column for a local newspaper and then got into blogging, which I’ve been doing for at least ten years now.
Several unfinished novels got left by the wayside over the years….
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have a small number of authors that I come back to again and again: Dickens, for one, and C S Lewis – both his fiction and nonfiction. I enjoy children’s fantasies more than adult ones, and have read a number of these over the years, including ones by Diana Wynne Jones, Madeleine L’Engle and Sharon Creech (although some might not regard her as a fantasist). I’ve recently discovered Nate Wilson, and have read a couple of books in the 100 Cupboards series.
All manner of authors have inspired me: some because they’re so remarkably good, and some because they were pretty bad and I knew I could do, and was doing, a lot better than them!
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book, which was published in March 2017 as an ebook, is The Disenchanted Wizard. It’s the third in a series that goes under the title of Grimhilderness. In this book a young soccer player called Della gets involved against her will in the strange events that result from someone escaping from her cousin’s map. (Yes, that’s what I said.) Della’s father goes missing in the process, and again, against her will, she’s dragged into the Map World to rescue him, and, even though she has no magic power herself, to battle against a wizard who has plans to take over her city…and possibly cities beyond.
This book took me a couple of years to write; but then I have a lot of other things on my plate, even though I’m retired. And I’m a bit of a procrastinator. Still a couple of years is shorter than the first book, which began life as a children’s opera back in the 70s, got put away, was pulled out again this century, revised almost totally with mostly new music, and then turned into the first book in this fantasy series.
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