Michael Clark is a fourth-year adolescent education major with a concentration in English and a minor in creative writing. As you can tell, he’s a jack-of-all-trades from his studies alone, but he doesn’t stop there. Clark is a self-published author of two books, “Dream Shifter” and “Dream Shifter II: Theater of Dreams,” as well as a musician who makes music unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
As far as his two books go, inspiration stemmed from all over. As a child, Clark did a significant amount of storytelling and creative writing without even realizing it. Towards the end of high school, he started reading a lot of Stephen King, and eventually it inspired him to try his hand at writing. What entranced him in the craft was the ability to create worlds and characters and play God over his literary creations. He doesn’t think his command of grammar and language is exactly phenomenal, but it captured his interest anyway. He credits his creative spark as his strongest attribute. “Dream Shifter” came to him while he was in the shower back in 2015, so he immediately ran out to start writing it before he forgot. Many powerful emotions poured out of him to help write the book. With the help of Amazon, he found his outlet to publish and he hasn’t stopped pumping out creative creations since.
In regards to music, Clark takes the term “experimental” to a whole new level. He’s been playing the drums for eight years and he sings at the same time, which may not sound all that special, except when you realize he doesn’t have a band to back him up. He aims to play and create in as many genres as he can. He mainly plays a hybrid of metal and punk, but when performing live he likes to rap and play the drums all at once— which is quite a daring feat. He even makes beats and mash-up loops from his phone. A testament to his long experience in music lies in his project “MCMC,” which is almost five years old.
Clark’s self-sufficiency cannot be overstated, as he relies entirely on himself to create all the magic that he does. Seeing his discography on bandcamp and holding physical copies of his self-published novels is a surreal experience for him. He’s most proud of his courage to put himself out there, make the music he wants to make and follow his dream of writing until he makes it come true, proven by the 260 pages of hard work that lies in his novels already. He won’t let anyone else’s opinion stop him from doing what he loves.
His grind never stops, and he’s been sitting on his fourth EP, which will be his most musically diverse one yet, for about a year. Once he hits the studio to mix and master his two songs, he’ll have even more for his audiences to enjoy. He’s also been non-stop working on his next three novels, which will be a short-story anthology, a science-fiction book and a poetry book.
Check Michael Clark out on bandcamp, and buy his books on Amazon or in person!
