Mike Crase, an NIU Building Services employee, put his writing skills to work by collecting some old columns and writing a book.

“A Few Thoughts on a Scrap of Paper, or Smile and Upset Somebody’s Day,” was published in October and can be bought at Barnes and Noble and Borders bookstores and online.

The book is a collection of columns that cover a 20-year period while Crase worked as an editor and reporter for papers in northern Illinois.

It covers a wide range of topics from parenting to dealing with death.

“When you’re an editor of a small weekly paper, you can write about things like this,” Crase said.

Crase received a lot of his ideas from personal experiences.

“I have some funny stories that I would take from things my daughter did, like how we would buy her all of these toys and she would have more fun playing with the pots and pans,” he said.

Other stories express a more serious message, he said.

“In another series, I talk about a mother’s struggle about giving up her child for adoption,” he said.

Several of Crase’s stories involve an alter ego named Charlie Bubble.

“I used Charlie in my stories when I wanted to express my opinion on a subject that people might find offensive or get mad about,” he said.

Crase said he started the project when he was diagnosed with depression.

“I was dealing with a divorce and the death of my father at the time, and I wanted to leave my kids a legacy, so people came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you should put this in a book,’ and I did,” he said.

Crase said he doesn’t intend for the book to be his last.

“I enjoyed the fact that I did this, I put a lot of emotion and thought into this and there are some really good pieces that people can relate to,” he said. “Eventually, I plan on writing another book on feature stories I did about other people over the years.”