Stjepan Krešimir Kračun was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1982.In his spare time, he enjoys listening to music, preferably heavy metal and its subgenres, rock, punk rock, hard rock, and altogether any type of music that carries personally relatable emotional elements. He studied music professionally, which included playing piano as his main instrument and choir singing, but also the study of solfeggio, harmony, composition, and the history of music. He abandoned these studies, after 8 years of formal training, to pursue an education, and later a career, in science. He still likes to play classical guitar, which he’s self-taught in, and sing a song or two from time to time.He enjoys walking and spending time in nature, which has always proved to be an endless source of inspiration and a calming respite for stray thoughts.He’s an avid smoker of cigars and tobacco pipes which he finds conducive to relaxing, reflecting, meditation, and sometimes, also creativity and writing.He also enjoys collecting functional bladed weapons: longswords, shorts words, daggers, and knives. His personal mental journey continuously influences his writing and vice versa, and he often refers to it as “meditative writing”. Furthermore, this journey was also inspired by his keen interest in and study of psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and psychoanalysis which are often a metaphorized theme or at least an aspect of his written works. His amateur study of the disciplines mentioned above has also led to his perception of religion, politics, social dynamics, and society itself as an object of observation and as a curious discussion topic, but rarely as an area of life to identify with or to play an active role in. Analogously, he sees the human mind, including his own, as a mere instrument of self-consciousness, and certainly not a vessel to be identified with let alone contained in. What he enjoys most is spending time with his lovely wife Lightangel, a Danish visual artist who is the reason why he moved to Denmark in 2009. He’s been writing since his teenage years, always in English, and considers it both a hobby as well as a semi-professional inclination. He is a prolific author of ten published books: one poetry collection (Mental Eclipse: Poetry Collection), one collection of essays on psychology and psychoanalysis (Orbis Perpetui Mentis: The World of the Endless Mind), one collection of satirical humor articles published under the alias Pipey Dogga (Pipey Dogga’s House: The Chronicles of a Smoking Dog), five novels: one horror (Vampire Grimoire), one black humor/thriller (Flesh Machine: The Story), one autobiographical fiction (The Crazy Book about Normal Things: The Story of Jimmy Pebbel and Ferdinand Rock), one collection of short stories (The Open Window), two dystopian thrillers (Eudystopia: The Awakening of Niederlager Schade and Eudystopia 2.0: True Love Never Dies), and one satire fiction (The Pigeons Did It!: A Garden Variety Soap Opera).He lives in Denmark and works as a Research and Development scientist with more than 18 years of professional experience, he holds a Master's degree in chemistry, a PhD degree in Health Sciences, and specializes in the disciplines of bioorganic synthetic chemistry, bioconjugation, biotechnology, microarray technology, and high-throughput automation for the purposes of assay development, e.g. developing methods for measuring target parameters, within the areas of human immunology, human and plant glycomics (i.e. the study of naturally occurring carbohydrates and their dynamics in living systems), bacterial microbiology, and general cell biology and dynamics. His additional skills include computer programing and back-end coding for the purpose of high-throughput data analysis automation and implementation.In his professional capacity, he has (co)authored 27 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 2 invited book chapters, and 3 international patents.Read more about this authorRead less about this author