Mike Crowl's Blog, page 24

Review Tales reviews The Disenchanted Wizard

Another review of The Disenchanted Wizard, this time by Jeyran Main, on her
This children’s book has everything suitable to engage and intrigue the young mind. It is full of action, thrills, educational and positive messages, as well as the fun and exciting adventure one normally looks for in a tale.The plot and the characters were very well aligned together, eliminating any loopholes or questionable events. The paragraphs and the layout of t...

Review of Disenchanted Wizard

Just a quick note: a friend of mine read The Disenchanted Wizard and put a review on Facebook. Since it'll vanish from there quickly, I'm adding it here as well. (She's going to put it on Goodreads when she gets back from out of town, I believe.)

Just read 'The Disenchanted Wizard' by my friend Mike Crowl. Simply amazing what an author with a vivid imagination can do with the love of soccer, the discovery of a map, a long ago act of revenge and two youngsters - oh, and lots of extras...

New review of Grimhilda!

Very pleased to get such a positive review of my first children's fantasy, Grimhilda!, from Rosie Malezer of Readers' Favorite. 
Grimhilda! is the first fantasy children’s book in the Grimhilderness series, written by Mike Crowl and Cherianne Parks. Eight-year-old Toby Ashton-Batchelor barely remembers the days when his parents had paid him some attention. Over the past few years, George and Sylvia Ashton-Batchelor had always been too busy with their own hobbies and social lives...

Guest post from Laura Libricz

Today I'm presenting a guest post from Laura Libricz. 
Welcome to Day 3 of my #RRBC “SPOTLIGHT” Author Blog Tour. I would like to thank the RRBC and my host for this great opportunity. Today I’d like to talk about the inspiration behind my first novel The Master and the Maid.Tales of masters involved with their maids have as much allure today as they did in history. In the news, we read sordid tales of Hollywood stars romantically involved with their personnel and the scand...

Guest post from RRCB writer

This guest post will appear on the 9th May....

RRBC and The Computer Heist

As part of marketing my latest book, I've got involved in an online reviewing and support group, Rave Reviews Book Club, (or RRBC for short) in the last two or three weeks. Certainly it's a busy and energetic group, with plenty going on. At the moment I'm keeping up with the pace!

They select three books from their members for review each month and you can choose which book you'd like to review. You're only required to do four reviews a year - no biggie - and these can be from other books as w...

How to lose your reader and/or your viewer

My wife and I watched the first half of a movie the other night: Small Crimes, which is streaming on Netflix. It's based on a book by Dave Zeltserman which gets mostly rave reviews on Goodreads. (Usually with Goodreads, I find, you have to ignore half the positive reviews in order to get a real balance of views on a book, but that's by the by.) 

So it sounds like the book is worth reading, if you're into noir, and unreliable narrators, and subtle characterisation. The movie has a reasonab...

How to lose your reader or your viewer

My wife and I watched the first half of a movie the other night: Small Crimes, which is streaming on Netflix. It's based on a book by Dave Zeltserman which gets mostly rave reviews on Goodreads. (Usually with Goodreads, I find, you have to ignore half the positive reviews in order to get a real balance of views on a book, but that's by the by.) 

So it sounds like the book is worth reading, if you're into noir, and unreliable narrators, and subtle characterisation. The movie has a reasonab...

Downbeat Mamet

A few days ago I wrote about the possibility of listing the movies I watch. I'm not sure that my enthusiasm at that point has continued. I may just carry on writing up movies in my journal and on here, in the blog. At least then those that hit the spot in either a negative or positive fashion will get remembered a bit better.

I watched House of Games  last night. It turned up on Maori TV, which was a bit odd, although they do have a reputation for showing offbeat movies - more often foreig...

Google side alleys and back corners

Years ago I wrote a piece about the way in which many people spell the word crawl (as in a baby learning to crawl) as crowl, which of course is my surname - it was while I was searching Google that I discovered this fairly common error. Unfortunately I can't find that article anymore: it may be on my computer somewhere but a search doesn't bring it up readily, or else I no longer recognise the title of the piece.

My search above started because I was looking up my own name on Google. Self...