| Interview with Mark Crilley |
First off, thanks so much for joining us for an up-close and personal interview for TeensReadToo.com! My
name is Jen, and I'll be your server toda...oh, wait, wrong job! Anyway, thanks so much for taking time out
of your writing schedule--which I'm sure is busy!--and answering a few questions for your readers and fans.
Let's get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you
wanted to be a writer?
This is a little tricky for me to answer, because I had always seen myself--even from early childhood--as
becoming an illustrator, not a writer. Writing very much snuck up on me from behind. The first time I wrote
something with the intention of having it published was when I created my first Akiko comic book story. This
was in 1992, when I was working in Japan as an English teacher. So I knew at that point that I wanted to be
a published comic book creator, which of course involved becoming both a writer and an illustrator.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
My path to published chapter books was very unusual, possibly even the first of its kind. I took my comic
book story, entitled Akiko on the Planet Smoo, and mailed it to ten different small comic book publishers.
One of them, Sirius Entertainment, began publishing it as a series in 1996. Random House became aware
of my comic and (here's the unusual part) they came to me, and invited me to turn it into a series of chapter
books. Talk about luck: Without pursuing it, without even having an agent, I suddenly had a publishing deal.
I am not aware of any other comic book creator being given such an opportunity before or since, so I guess
you could say I've had a charmed life!
Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing
about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?
My new project is Miki Falls, a series of four graphic novels for HarperCollins, the first of which will be
published in May 2007 (the second soon thereafter: July). It is a manga-style project with, in my
not-so-humble opinion, some of the best artwork I've ever done. Though I've been known for elementary
age writing up until now, this project is a supernatural love story aimed toward teenage girls. Think of it as a
manga version of the movie Ghost (the supernatural part) combined with Romeo and Juliet (a classic tale of
forbidden love); all of it set, as it happens, in rural Japan. (Miki Falls: Spring and Miki Falls: Summer)
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
My initial inspiration to get into children's books was David Small, who was my art teacher/mentor back in
college. I'll never forget seeing the original illustrations for Imogene's Antlers. What a thrill! These days
though, it's the readers themselves that inspire me to do my best. I visit a lot of schools and libraries, and
it's always a great pleasure to meet my readers face to face, and see that my books are reaching the
people I most want to reach.
Let's hear about your family, who I'm sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
My wife, Miki, is a native of Japan. We met when she was in America for a stay that was only supposed to
last a couple of years; happily, she agreed to change her plans not long after I met her. Our seven-year-old
son, Matthew, loves to draw and to write stories. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him follow in my
footsteps someday (though of course I will first warn him about the perils of self-employment!). Our newborn
daughter, Mio, is just over seven months old. I feel so incredibly lucky to work out of the house, and thus
see much more of my children on a day-to-day basis than most fathers can.
Now for some fun facts. What's your greatest comfort food?
I love pistachios, tortilla chips, almonds, pretty much any salty snack! When I was in college a friend of mine
said, "Never give Crilley anything in a bag. It'll come back empty."
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
These days, the first thing I do is pick up Mio (who serves as an alarm clock for both Miki and I), take her
downstairs, give her some milk, and change her diapers. If all goes well I can finally brush my teeth after all
of this is done!
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what's the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
I suppose you'd be a bit surprised to see perfectly good oil paintings I've done collecting dust in the
basement. I really should get around to having those things framed!
Everyone asks the question about "if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?" so I want to know: If
you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?
I want to be the color ochre. To me it is the color of something that has aged, like old paper, and has
become all the more beautiful because of it.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
Calvin and Hobbes are my favorite cartoon characters. As for the cartoon character I am most similar to, it
would have to be a goofball like Dagwood Bumstead!
If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world ("Beam me up, Scotty!"), during any time in history,
where and when would it be--and why?
Hmm, there are a great many places and periods I'd like to visit, but I think I'd say Japan in the mid-19th
century, just before it was "opened" to the outside world. I'd love to see what Japan was like before the
arrival of Western influences.
So what's your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you're writing?
Well, first let me say I am something of a music geek. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't just like a song, I like
"this part"--the three second bit right here--"just after the third verse" of a song. And, yeah, I know
everybody says they like all kinds of music, but in my case I truly do like at least some songs from pretty
much every genre of music. My main prerequisites are that (a) it have an interesting, at least moderately
unpredictable melody, and (b) it can't be just 100% angry noise: I need something more than that, and yes,
I do gravitate toward the mellower types of music for the most part. (Golly, I think I answered this one in a
wee bit too much detail!)
Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie you
saw at the theater?
I am quite the antithesis when it comes to TV. I have truly missed out on--quite happily--every wildly popular
TV series since, I swear, the days of All In the Family and Mary Tyler Moore. (And yes, I was but a youth
when those series were on the air!). I largely stopped watching TV in high school and never looked back.
I enjoy movies though. I have a strange, not quite explainable affection for "Planes, Trains, and
Automobiles." And that's a pretty good indicator of the kind of movie I like: a smallish movie, with characters
that I genuinely care about by the end of the film. The last film I saw in the theater was â"ight at the
Museum." I'll just say thank goodness my son liked it, because it was, for me, a biggish film with characters I
didn't give a hoot about from beginning to end.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
I think the best guidance I can give is read widely, watch widely, and soak up as many high-quality
influences as you can. Draw inspiration from dozens of sources. If you are influenced by nothing but Harry
Potter you will write a second-rate Harry Potter book. If you blend Harry with J. D. Salinger, and Monty
Python, and The Beatles, and anything and everything that you admire and respect, you will be well on the
way to creating something all your own.
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
I've got loads of ideas waiting in the wings. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be pitching after Miki Falls (it hinges
on how Miki is received, as you might imagine), but it will in all likelihood still be in the realm of young
readers/teen readers. Ideas that appeal to those age groups are the kinds of ideas that pop into my head
on a regular basis--truly every other day, it seems--and those are the readers I'm most delighted to hear I'm
reaching. So when it comes to my next project you and I will just have to wait and see, I'm afraid.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
The pleasure's all mine. Thanks so much for having me!
name is Jen, and I'll be your server toda...oh, wait, wrong job! Anyway, thanks so much for taking time out
of your writing schedule--which I'm sure is busy!--and answering a few questions for your readers and fans.
Let's get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you
wanted to be a writer?
This is a little tricky for me to answer, because I had always seen myself--even from early childhood--as
becoming an illustrator, not a writer. Writing very much snuck up on me from behind. The first time I wrote
something with the intention of having it published was when I created my first Akiko comic book story. This
was in 1992, when I was working in Japan as an English teacher. So I knew at that point that I wanted to be
a published comic book creator, which of course involved becoming both a writer and an illustrator.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
My path to published chapter books was very unusual, possibly even the first of its kind. I took my comic
book story, entitled Akiko on the Planet Smoo, and mailed it to ten different small comic book publishers.
One of them, Sirius Entertainment, began publishing it as a series in 1996. Random House became aware
of my comic and (here's the unusual part) they came to me, and invited me to turn it into a series of chapter
books. Talk about luck: Without pursuing it, without even having an agent, I suddenly had a publishing deal.
I am not aware of any other comic book creator being given such an opportunity before or since, so I guess
you could say I've had a charmed life!
Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing
about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?
My new project is Miki Falls, a series of four graphic novels for HarperCollins, the first of which will be
published in May 2007 (the second soon thereafter: July). It is a manga-style project with, in my
not-so-humble opinion, some of the best artwork I've ever done. Though I've been known for elementary
age writing up until now, this project is a supernatural love story aimed toward teenage girls. Think of it as a
manga version of the movie Ghost (the supernatural part) combined with Romeo and Juliet (a classic tale of
forbidden love); all of it set, as it happens, in rural Japan. (Miki Falls: Spring and Miki Falls: Summer)
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
My initial inspiration to get into children's books was David Small, who was my art teacher/mentor back in
college. I'll never forget seeing the original illustrations for Imogene's Antlers. What a thrill! These days
though, it's the readers themselves that inspire me to do my best. I visit a lot of schools and libraries, and
it's always a great pleasure to meet my readers face to face, and see that my books are reaching the
people I most want to reach.
Let's hear about your family, who I'm sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
My wife, Miki, is a native of Japan. We met when she was in America for a stay that was only supposed to
last a couple of years; happily, she agreed to change her plans not long after I met her. Our seven-year-old
son, Matthew, loves to draw and to write stories. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him follow in my
footsteps someday (though of course I will first warn him about the perils of self-employment!). Our newborn
daughter, Mio, is just over seven months old. I feel so incredibly lucky to work out of the house, and thus
see much more of my children on a day-to-day basis than most fathers can.
Now for some fun facts. What's your greatest comfort food?
I love pistachios, tortilla chips, almonds, pretty much any salty snack! When I was in college a friend of mine
said, "Never give Crilley anything in a bag. It'll come back empty."
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
These days, the first thing I do is pick up Mio (who serves as an alarm clock for both Miki and I), take her
downstairs, give her some milk, and change her diapers. If all goes well I can finally brush my teeth after all
of this is done!
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what's the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
I suppose you'd be a bit surprised to see perfectly good oil paintings I've done collecting dust in the
basement. I really should get around to having those things framed!
Everyone asks the question about "if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?" so I want to know: If
you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?
I want to be the color ochre. To me it is the color of something that has aged, like old paper, and has
become all the more beautiful because of it.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
Calvin and Hobbes are my favorite cartoon characters. As for the cartoon character I am most similar to, it
would have to be a goofball like Dagwood Bumstead!
If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world ("Beam me up, Scotty!"), during any time in history,
where and when would it be--and why?
Hmm, there are a great many places and periods I'd like to visit, but I think I'd say Japan in the mid-19th
century, just before it was "opened" to the outside world. I'd love to see what Japan was like before the
arrival of Western influences.
So what's your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you're writing?
Well, first let me say I am something of a music geek. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't just like a song, I like
"this part"--the three second bit right here--"just after the third verse" of a song. And, yeah, I know
everybody says they like all kinds of music, but in my case I truly do like at least some songs from pretty
much every genre of music. My main prerequisites are that (a) it have an interesting, at least moderately
unpredictable melody, and (b) it can't be just 100% angry noise: I need something more than that, and yes,
I do gravitate toward the mellower types of music for the most part. (Golly, I think I answered this one in a
wee bit too much detail!)
Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie you
saw at the theater?
I am quite the antithesis when it comes to TV. I have truly missed out on--quite happily--every wildly popular
TV series since, I swear, the days of All In the Family and Mary Tyler Moore. (And yes, I was but a youth
when those series were on the air!). I largely stopped watching TV in high school and never looked back.
I enjoy movies though. I have a strange, not quite explainable affection for "Planes, Trains, and
Automobiles." And that's a pretty good indicator of the kind of movie I like: a smallish movie, with characters
that I genuinely care about by the end of the film. The last film I saw in the theater was â"ight at the
Museum." I'll just say thank goodness my son liked it, because it was, for me, a biggish film with characters I
didn't give a hoot about from beginning to end.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
I think the best guidance I can give is read widely, watch widely, and soak up as many high-quality
influences as you can. Draw inspiration from dozens of sources. If you are influenced by nothing but Harry
Potter you will write a second-rate Harry Potter book. If you blend Harry with J. D. Salinger, and Monty
Python, and The Beatles, and anything and everything that you admire and respect, you will be well on the
way to creating something all your own.
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
I've got loads of ideas waiting in the wings. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be pitching after Miki Falls (it hinges
on how Miki is received, as you might imagine), but it will in all likelihood still be in the realm of young
readers/teen readers. Ideas that appeal to those age groups are the kinds of ideas that pop into my head
on a regular basis--truly every other day, it seems--and those are the readers I'm most delighted to hear I'm
reaching. So when it comes to my next project you and I will just have to wait and see, I'm afraid.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
The pleasure's all mine. Thanks so much for having me!
