Featured Interview With David C Mason
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in the east end of London, England and spent about forty years there before I finally moved out to the south coast. I now reside in Bexhill-on-Sea, a small town closer to France than London…but I’m not planning on swimming the English Channel just yet.
Our cats, Toby and Hugo, make up the rest of family.
I now divide my time between writing and photography.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When I was small any child’s introduction to books was the Ladybird Janet and John series, which for me was tedious as I had a reading age a couple of years ahead of my own age. I wasn’t a child prodigy though.
At home we had a set of encyclopaedia’s and I’d spend ages looking through them. Each book in the set was themed and my favourite was a collection of Greek myths, or as I saw them adventures. As I enjoyed them, learning to read them on my own set me ahead.
I started writing stories in school – silly things inspired by those myths, and films. Ones that stuck were the Matt Helm films with Dean Martin – don’t ask me why.
As I got into my teens beer, music, and then cars took over. Once I started work, the creative writing stopped.
The only writing was reports, specifications, business cases, and the dreaded slideware. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I realised that while I was working in that corporate environment, a lot of what I produced, especially forecasts and marketing stuff, could have been considered works of fiction – but with the joy removed.
A long overdue resignation reignited the creative juices.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
When I was younger, I read a lot of Stephen King, moved onto Tolkien and then worked my way through the Chronices of Thomas Covenant, but to be honest, it was a bit heavy for me. I’m not a Dragons epic kind of guy, but there’s no denying the skill and heavy lifting in writing these sagas, so my hat is off to those authors.
Today my favourite authors depend on my mood. If I fancy a classic, then it’s Alexander Dumas. The unabridged version of the Count of Monte Cristo still has moments when I say to myself – “did that just happen?”. For adventure and escapism it’s John Buchan and his character Richard Hannay, or Margery Allingham and the adventures of Campion.
If I need satire then it has to be Jonathan Swift with Gulliver’s Travels or any book by Terry Pratchett that includes Sam Vimes of the Ankh Morpork Night Watch – a great character.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Pandora’s Gardener is what I call a mystery thriller with added humour. It’s the story of a gardener, who through no fault of his own, gets sucked into secret war. At stake is democracy itself, and if the master villain wins out, it’ll make the Third Reich look benign. Adventures ensue as our Gardener gets further and further embroiled.
I wanted to write something that would be total escapism – I think we need it. The book deliberately segues between the serious and shall we say, some more fanciful situations in a world which isn’t so much parallel – just a little bit skewed to the side.
I enjoyed writing it – I hope people enjoy reading it.
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