Douglas Christian Larsen, born in 1962, is an artist and writer, the progeny of writer-artists going back several generations. His father, Walter Christian Larsen, is artist, writer, poet, sculptor and singer, and his grandfather, Walter Arnold Larsen, was writer, artist, soldier, lawman, musician and purportedly the illegitimate grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark. On his mother's side, he is Hungarian, from the lines of both Medvee and Jacko. On the Hungarian side, Douglas, at 6'2", is a giant, whereas on the Danish side he is somewhat of a dwarf (the average shortest height of the men on the Danish side is 6'4"), and has come to be viewed as either a very short giant, or a very tall dwarf (with a head the size of a wrecking ball, and purportedly every bit as dense).
Larsen survived pneumonia at a year of age (in a semi-coma for over a month, staring at the ceiling, this could be where his penchant for staring at clouds originated, or some might say the origins of his blank stare), grew into a quirky child with a love of monsters (at a precociously early age he bawled his eyes out when King Kong died), ducked a career in boxing (probably a very short career) and has primarily practiced the craft of writing since about the age of thirteen, beginning his career as an obsessive storyteller around the age of two (which many often termed it "the fine art of lying"), and has chiefly focused on writing novels during his early life.
He began writing his first novel at the age of thirteen (which novel is still alive and well, albeit spread out over several workbenches like a disassembled engine, and unedited is somewhat larger than 1,500 pages of single-spaced old-fashioned typewritten pages), and has continued to write until the present day. Of ten novels, the very first in print is Deceiving the Elect - Book 1: Quickening Dreams. Soon to be published is his historical fantasy Tamer of Horses, based on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. In recent years he has focused more on his artwork, primarily an extension of the early compulsive doodles he practiced throughout his school years (he learned relatively little through more than 15 years of schooling, and has more had to draw off his extensive reading for anything remotely resembling a real education, but most people play it safe and just consider him an ignorant boob, and Larsen does not argue).
A voracious reader, Larsen has consistently polished off an average of two books per week since the concept of "reading" clicked early in the first grade. In the fourth grade aptitude tests revealed that the young Dougie read and understood at the college sophomore level (which upset his parents, because they felt he should be getting better grades if his reading was that exalted). He reads the Bible (in many versions), histories, biographies and autobiographies, scholarly work, novels, speculative, experimental, childrens' stories, fairytales, and any printed text that catches his glance (including cereal boxes and milk cartons).
A few of his favorite classical authors include Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and many, many more (he could really go on for forever with this, well, maybe five minutes less than forever).
A few of his favorite contemporary authors include Alice Hoffman, William Goldman, Barbara Kingsolver, Trevanian, Chuck Palahniuk, Charles R. Pellegrino, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ted Dekker, David James Duncan, Anne Tyler, Jane Jensen, Greg Iles, Jhumpa Lahiri and many, many more (he probably could not go on forever with this, but possibly ten minutes less than forever).
He relishes good movies, especially complicated, character-driven plots with lots of twists and turns, and especially perks up when time travel works its way into the plot (he never really caught on to the television series Lost until the character Desmond appeared and started leaping about in time). Perhaps his three favorite movies of all time (but then we have to make it four to include Wuthering Heights) are Amadeus, Somewhere in Time, and Amazing Grace. Note, Amazing Grace is a very recent addition, but it is so inspiring to Larsen that he has already viewed it more than twenty-five times.
Larsen identified early with the animal, and conceptualization, of "the wolf." The roots of his canis lupus obsession probably dig down as early as when he was no more than three years of age and came into the house after playing in the mud, and his mother exclaimed: "Oh Dougie, you Dirty Dog!" And later when children on the playground equated "Doug" with "dog" (kids will make fun of your name regardless of what it is), and perhaps more strongly when he discovered in the fifth grade Jack London and White Fang and The Call of the Wild and instantly identified with the magnificent totem animal, the wolf, majestic and strong. Then reading The Sea Wolf in the seventh grade and meeting Wolf Larsen, poor Douglas Christian Larsen was never the same (he may have somewhat whimsically believed he was reading about himself, and would come to resemble London's fictional antihero in many ways, not the least of which was the correct spelling of the Danish "Larsen"). From an early age many of his closest acquaintances have called him Wolf. In 2003, Wolfgang Christian Larsen was born, the chunk off the old chunk, Larsen's very own mini-me, the official "Wolf Larsen," by birth.
By far the most important thing to Douglas Christian Larsen is his family. Even when he was a small boy he knew he wanted to be husband (hopefully first) and papa, having lots and lots of children. He used to tell people that he wanted, oh, about...TEN...children. Maybe a few more. Finding the right woman proved harder than he thought possible, and after a disastrous early marriage and divorce he discovered and married actress Carolena of the Angels Chapman in 1995, and by the age of 47 his maximum child count would hit its zenith at six (four with Carolena). His children, from oldest to youngest, are:
Harrison Christian Larsen (born 1986)
Alicia Kathryn Larsen (born 1988)
Bronté Carolena Larsen (born 2000)
Dirklan Christian Larsen (born 2002)
Wolfgang Christian Larsen (born 2003)
Genevieve Nancy Larsen (born 2008)
Follower of Christ (but impossible to squish down into any particular denomination, as he believes in the Bible, while nearly all denominations place their cherished man-made tradition far higher than any scripture); Papa, vegetarian (mostly vegan but not religiously so), writer, reader, artist, thinker, free spirit, Photoshop guru, graphic designer, technical editor, and passionate lover of venti soy coffee miso with one honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon, he is...
(perhaps more than you ever wanted to know,
and were certainly too afraid to ask)
