Featured Interview With Jason Mather
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Jason Mather is a resident of Greeley, Colorado, and a graduate of University of Northern Colorado, where he majored in music. He is a free-lance musician, part time welder, and part time kennel worker. He lives with his wife Heather, and his three dogs: Gizmo, Kaori, and Ellie Mae.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As an adult I became a huge fan of James Bond. I like the movies, even the ones I know are not very good. But I like the books even better. Ian Fleming’s Bond character is a more romantic and tragic character then is normally portrayed in the films, though the recent films with Daniel Craig have gotten closer. Fleming’s original Bond is not the carefree ladies’ man that is portrayed in the movies. He’s a thug with enough intelligence to hate what it is that he excels at. He wants a normal life, and a loving relationship, but he rejects these because he doesn’t think he can have them, so he plays the rogue as a protective measure.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
William Gibson, Raymond Chandler, and Philip K. Dick I love Noir fiction. My favorite book is Catch 22. I have read it more than a dozen times. I read it every year around December. The more I read that book the more I start to think it’s not really satire, or, if it is, it’s just very slightly over the line from normal. It’s such a deceptive book. I read it and laugh all the way through, but so little of what is happening is actually funny.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The state of the world in Shadowlife is my take on where our current society could arrive in the near future. There is no intention for it to be either dystopian or utopian. It has simply continued to move on, and bring both the good and the bad with it. There have been some upheavals. The federal government has been reduced to a kind of transit authority between city-states. The city-states are where the power lies, and each city is a power unto itself. They are expected to govern and provide for their populace with only the resources within their own border, or through trade with other city-states. It is not a perfect system. Corruption is still evident, and no city-state can provide for its population perfectly. All citizens are given tracking chips while still in the womb, a situation that has both positive and negative repercussions.
The primary thing that the world of Shadowlife retains is continued human error and imperfection. The world is intended to be a believable evolution of where humanity is today. Technology continues to develop, to both solve and create new issues, and people remain people, completely recognizable to us in this age, but dealing with developments and technologies that have yet to arrive in our time.
Obviously, no one could know where we will actually be in the near future, so any attempt to predict is merely a flight of fantasy on the creator’s part. Any technology presented is simply to further the story and nothing else. The world will move on.
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