No. 19 Vol. 8
My Life Publications • 1-800-691-7549
September 2023
Former Area Resident Publishes Debut Novel
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By Steve Sears 9-year-old Michael Mortimer may have moved to Arizona in 1999, but a big part of him is still in the Great Meadows community he is familiar with. So much so, his debut novel, The Town Crier, takes place in the Warren County area where he grew up. Mortimer said, “The seeds of The Town Crier were planted when I was a young child, always fascinated by gothic imagery, mysteries, monsters, haunted houses, witches, and wizards. I remember being obsessed with the Universal Studios monsters and the Hammer horror movies that popped up on television. I couldn’t get enough of that kind of thing. I dreamt about it, and for a long time I wanted to tell a story that encapsulates all these things.” He has done exactly that. His book was published in June by Two Fathoms Deep Publishing Mortimer developed the idea for The Town Crier as a screenplay over 20 years ago, but he never further proceeded beyond brainstorming notes. It wasn’t until five or six years ago after he took some fiction courses and had encouraging results, that he turned it into a book. “At that point,” Mortimer said, “I decided to take it way back in time and create a sort of historical tapestry.”
Mortimer provided a snippet about the book. “The Town Crier follows a powerful magic stone as it is passed on through millennia in the area that comes to be Warren County,” he said. “It’s not meant to be a true history, of course, and some reallife characters and their names are used with dramatic license, but I did stay true to the development timeline of the area in and around Hackettstown, from pre-history to the present. Into this mix I throw images, monsters, and supernatural forces. All these things have preoccupied me since I was young. Living in the middle of the woods from age 8 to 18 left me overwhelmed by the power of nature, which is a part of the book. The book takes place throughout multiple time periods, but each story is tied to the others in various small or big ways; the idea being that all of humankind has followed a path to get where we are today.” Mortimer, a lover of books since he was a child, initially aimed to be a screenwriter or filmmaker. After two years of film school at Rowan University in Glassboro, he moved out to Phoenix where two of his friends lived, figuring it was not only a change of scenery but a few steps closer to the movie world. He’s written eight feature-length screenplays and made a couple short films, and in 2016, he graduated from the Wilkes
Michael Mortimer
University of Mesa, Arizona Graduate Creative Writing Program. The person at the helm had an encouraging effect on him. Mortimer explained, “I focused on screenwriting in the program, but also took some fiction courses. My instructor, Sara Pritchard, was super encouraging about my work, which sparked my interest in trying my hand at long form fiction. I was close to securing funding for another low budget film when the pandemic hit, and everything evaporated. After a year or so of wallowing in quarantine self-pity, I decided to sit down
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and write the book.” Everything Mortimer has written reflects his life in some way, but he feels The Town Crier is by far the most autobiographical. He said, “Maybe the topsy-turvy state of the world in the last handful of years drove me to want to express myself in a more personal way, I don’t know. It was certainly therapeutic. I suppose more than anything the reader will learn about how I see the world.” To order The Town Crier, visit www. thetowncrierbook.com, or www.amazon. com for paperback and eBook versions.