About Mike Crowl and his books

The Grimhilderness Series

Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents (suitable 7-12)
The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret (suitable 8-13)
The Disenchanted Wizard (suitable 9-13)

The Counterfeit Queen (mid-teens and up)

All these books can be read as stand-alone titles, and the age ranges above are only suggestions (I read books written for children of all ages),

These books are currently available only on Amazon, either as ebooks or paperbacks, though this may change in the future. 

Nonfiction

Diary of a Prostate Wimp - How I survived a prostate biopsy, catheters, infections, and the joys and woes of water retention. 

About the author and his books

I've been writing for most of my life. I began to be published on a casual basis back in the 1990s with various magazines and newspapers, and soon was writing a weekly column for a local newspaper. This column survived for five years, until one day when I wrote something that apparently offended the new editor. At that point I received a letter (this was back in snail mail days) in which I was summarily dismissed from the job. A large number of these columns are now available on this blog - the index page is here. 

In 2012, with the assistance of a friend, I wrote the script for a family musical called Grimhilda!, and composed the music. This was presented in the Mayfair Theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand, the city where I've mostly lived since 1948 (I was born three years before, in Melbourne, Australia). This production was successful in terms of audience enjoyment - if not quite so much in terms of financial rewards. Subsequently I decided to turn the musical's script into a book; this was published as an ebook under the title, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents, in January 2014. 

A few months later I completed a non-fiction title, one that I'd considered writing for some time. This related to my not-so-happy experiences after undergoing a prostate biopsy. It's called Diary of a Prostate Wimp. 

The sequel to Grimhilda!, is The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret. This was published in November, 2014, on Kindle 

The follow-up book in the series (called Grimhilderness) was published in early 2017. It's called The Disenchanted Wizard and while it has no apparent links to the previous two, it will one day connect to the rest of the series (!)

And most recently, in 2023, after some five years of on and off writing, I finished The Counterfeit Queen. This title picks up on the two main characters from Grimhilda! and uncovers some of the mysteries of that first book. 

More about Mike Crowl

I first began learning the piano at the age of seven. By the time I was twenty, I had worked as rehearsal pianist for a number of local shows, in an amateur capacity. This was followed for a couple of years with professional work with the New Zealand Opera Company, as a repetiteur. I toured my home country of New Zealand from the top to the bottom and back again, firstly as the accompanist/music director of a very much cut-down version of La Boheme that was performed in a variety of small towns, and then as the accompanist for the New Zealand Opera Quartet, a group of four singers who performed at virtually every high school in the country. 

I attended the London Opera Centre at the same time as the much more famous Kiri te Kanawa, and then stayed on in London for another five years. On returning home to New Zealand with my English-born wife, I settled into a long career as an amateur musician. Alongside my playing, I've composed a large number of songs and piano pieces, many of which have been performed by various local artists.

Early in the 21st century, I was asked to play a number of roles in theatre productions. I'd been involved in theatre in his late teens, but more often on the musical side than the acting. The process of memorizing lines (I've memorized Scripture and poetry for much of my life) has fascinated me for years, and I find that age is no barrier to remembering scripts, but it does take longer as you get older to get to grips with the lines, and fluency isn't what it was.

I've been a Christian all my life, though for various reasons the denomination I've been involved with has varied as time's gone on, from Catholic to Pentecostal to Baptist to Brethren. With my wife I attended Dunedin City Baptist Church for nearly thirty years. I ran a Christian bookshop from 1989 to 2006, after being an assistant pastor of the Assembly of God Church for two years. 

Six years ago, rather unexpectedly, we shifted 110 kms north to the small town of Oamaru, where the parking is easy, the streets are quieter and where we've made a whole host of new friends and acquaintances. And where, recently, I've had the opportunity to preach again - occasionally - after not having done this for some decades.