Amanda Jeffery, Free Press
Local author Jeff Crawford has released another book. The author is known for his previous novel Dreamshaper, which was released October 2009. This book, though, is aimed toward a younger audience.
Mr. Pratt’s Coffee Mug was released in August 2020. Crawford said he was inspired by one of his teacher’s coffee mugs when he was growing up. “His coffee mug was absolutely disgusting, to the point where you could smell it half-way across the classroom,” says Crawford.
He says the mug was a frequent topic of conversation amongst the students. The more he thought about it, Crawford said he started wondering what kind of creature would grow inside a mug like that.
In the book, a creature escapes the mug, but only one student sees it. The story is about the student dealing with the critter before it wreaks too much havoc.
“This one is my first illustrated book,” says Crawford, who is now a teacher at Drayton Valley’s HW Pickup School. He says the age group it’s aimed for is about seven or eight years old. “At the end of it there’s a bunch of learning activities as well.”
Crawford says the illustrations for the book are one of his favourite parts. At one point a former student of his, Shae Skelton, reached out to him. “She just wanted to say thank you for the time we had in class, and she drew a little portrait of me because she was doing some digital artwork.” He says they ended up chatting and he learned that she was taking art classes in college.
When he got the rights for Dreamshaper back from the publishing company, he asked her if she could come up with a mock cover for Dreamshaper and he was impressed with the results. “The cover she drew me for Dreamshaper was far better than the one I got with my old publishing company,” he says. With the cover she provided, Crawford self published Dreamshaper.
Once she’d done that, Crawford continued to keep in touch with her and they started discussing Mr. Pratt’s Coffee Mug. “So all of the illustrations are actually done by Shae Skelton,” says Crawford. Skelton, he says, used to live in Drayton Valley but has since moved to pursue her academic goals. Crawford says he’s working with her right now on another illustrated book he hopes to release in the near future.
While it’s been a few years since Crawford released Dreamshaper, he says he has a few that he’s been working on. Two of them are stand alone novels that he has queried out. He’s also working on the sequel to Dreamshaper, which he says will be self-published like the first in the series.
“Ultimately my goal is always to be a full-time writer and to be able to bring that into the classroom,” he says.
Crawford also has a collection of three short stories that have been released called Tales From Mardell: Volume 1. Two of those stories were previously published in magazines. He says anyone looking to get a signed copy of Mr. Pratt’s can contact him at jwcdreamshaper@gmail.com. Crawford also has a website that promotes other local authors called FauphTalk Fiction, which can be visited at www.fauphtalkfiction.com
