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Hosted by JT Crowley
British Author JT Crowley is talking books with international authors online and on screen. These video chats will reveal the stories and characters as they are built from the ground up. Join JT and his guests to take the journey of engaging audiences through writing and story-telling.
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The Author
Neil Grew up in and around Washington D.C, and for most of his life he has been involved in the construction industry. He’s been married for neigh on forty-four years, plus he proudly states he is a Scottish Rite Mason. Poetry has been at the heart of his life for a considerable amount of time and very often the poems are accompanied to music. In 2018, Neil published his poetry book Moods of a Lake: and selected poems with illustrations to go with them, he’s currently working on a second book of poems, some short stories, a novella and a movie script, hmm…a busy guy. When you ask Neil what guides his life, he will say three things, but what those three things are, are revealed in his poetry, so when you read the poems, you need to search in between the lines for the message. Very clever.
Check out our video chat here!
The Book
Moods of a Lake: and Selected Poems
This is a book of forty-five free standing poems, for Neil it’s a collection of poetry because of the interactions he has had with people and events over the years who have in someway moulded his life. The poems are in sequential order, and I suppose you could say form a snapshot view over the years of Neil’s life from early childhood to mature adulthood. The poems depict the many trials in Neil’s life from the good to the bad, from the exciting to the dreary, plus happy and sad times. I think it’s wonderful how someone, can analyse their life in a collection of poems that we have here. Neil Noble’s life in forty-five fleeting glimpses of honesty, combined with fascination. The one thing that I have learned from Neil is that his poetry speaks from the heart about all sorts of issues, for example the many sides to love’s different philosophical thinking’s.
I’m led to believe that Neil sets his poetry to music, unfortunately that side of his poetry cannot be visualized in book format, but what can be visualized in book format are the illustrations by Jingfang Wang that cleverly accompany the poems, which for me brings a sense of reality to this wonderful book of poetry, built and created around Neil’s life in all its guises.
How to Connect with Neil
Visit Neil’s website here:
Webpage:www.neilnoble.net
Plus visit his social media sites:
www.facebook.com/neilnoble.79
www.linkedin.com/in/neilmnoble
For poetry: https://lnkd.in/dXHQggs
For Short stories: https://link.in/d5EV-AJ
Podcast Info
This podcast is available to listen to on all major social podcast platforms search Talking Books hosted by J T Crowley. The video is available on YouTube search Talking Books hosted by J T Crowley and now on the Roku and Amazon Fire Stick streaming devices. Download the Experts and Authors app on your television or visit www.Expertsandauthors.tv online and click TALKING BOOKS.
I was born on a warm summer’s evening to Irish immigrants. My father was born in Ireland under British rule, he kept British citizenship, which allowed him to join the British Royal Air Force and follow a career in aero engineering at Rolls Royce in Derby. My mother was actually born in Manhattan New York but after the tragic death of her father when she was just seven months old led her mother eventually having remarried several years later to return to Ireland, it was there on the wild west coastline my mother spent much of her childhood.
In August 1957 my parents married and settled in Derby where my brother and I along with our late sister grew up. On reflection we weren’t particularly financially well off but there again nor where the kids that we grew up with, so we were non the wiser. However my parents instilled in us to respect others and to do things with our lives that they weren’t able to do.
When I was at school I excelled in Geography looking at all the different places in the world. So I suppose it was that geographical background coupled with wanting to achieve things that my parents weren’t able to do so, that set me on my worldly travels.
The excitement of travel coupled with the allure of seeing different cultures especially the many facets of kid’s lives in those places in contrast to my own narrow childhood inspired me to write the book. I want kids to see beyond their own streets and their smartphones and I hope that when they’ve read the book they will start to see that different kids from dissimilar places in the world live and experience contrasting lives and some of those lifestyles can be defined as harsh. But above all I hope it inspires some of my young readers to follow in my footsteps and witness life in all its forms.
The one thing that I’ve learnt in life is that theory in itself is fine but putting that theory into a practical form like a book is somewhat different. I suppose what I’m trying to say here is having an idea for a book and actually writing it and promoting it to the public is a far cry from the initial notion. So what made me take the leap from the first mental pictures to transferring them to words on a page that kids and adults alike can read any where in the world, well that hawks back to my parents encouragement wanting me to achieve things they couldn’t.
As a child writing never came easy to me, and when I look back at some of the letters I wrote to my parents from boarding school I can only hang my head in shame. I suppose being a boy more interested with what was going on in the school playground rather than the classroom would lead my mother who was by then an English teacher to tearing her hair out, the look of despondency written on her face as she tried to get me to read a single page of a book only to hear me begrudgingly recite a page in front of her and asking having got to the end of the page, ”can I go now.” Little did I know then that not having the ability to read and write properly would set me back in life, something I later rectified. So kids you can change but go and see the world in all its beauty, and don’t forget respect all nations.