Featured Interview With William Matthies
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I live in San Clemente California, raised close by in Long Beach California. Great time to grow up there in the ’60’s. Coulda/shoulda paid more time to school, less time to surfing, but, looking back, no real regrets.
Although I have been back many time since, I managed to get myself banished for life from Catalina Island, aged 13. You can learn more about that at https://medium.com/@coyotewm/my-first-arrest-32d1a840d7b0 if you like.
Three years in the army including 1968 in Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division, I came home, went back to college, graduated with BA’s in Economics and Business Administration, an MBA soon after.
I’ve been a successful entrepreneur in companies of my own (we won’t talk about the ones I started that failed.) I’ve owned more guitars than I can recall, and after more than 50 years of trying, have managed to play today as those I just started.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My interest in books started for the wrong reasons. After college, I joined the Book of the Month Club, buying books fairly often. I did read most, but my primary interest was in people seeing I owned them, hopefully thinking because I did, I must be smart. That really didn’t work out, so I paid more attention to the reading, developing a habit of doing so every night, I’ve continued to this day.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Jack Kerouac, Hemingway, too many non fiction authors to recall and mention here. Who inspires me? Probably Kerouac’s “On the Road”. I’ve read it many times since the first time, and always feel as though I’m on the road with him.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn. The following is the synopsis I used while searching (unsuccessfully) for an agent.
The backstory is, I and three of my friends from high school all ended up in B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 19th Airborne Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam. We arrived December 7, 1967, Steve, my best friend of the bunch, was killed in action six months to the day we arrived, June 6, 1968. My book is dedicated to his memory.
Raymond (Ray) Quinn believes himself to be a middle-aged single man living in downtown Seattle, Washington state, US. Having accepted a buyout offer when the company he worked for was sold, he no longer needs to work. As a result, he has little to do. He is unhappy without knowing why. There is no one in his life, he has no hobbies or activities to occupy his time. His daily routine amounts to little more than going for morning coffee at Starbucks across the street from his condominium and Pike Market.
On the advice of a Starbucks barista, Ray decides to visit Other Worlds Coffee shop near the Seattle docks, where, the barista tells Ray, he will meet interesting people in an environment he will enjoy. Unable to find it on his own, he is approached by an Asian man who offers to take him there. Ray agrees to follow him, beginning a relationship between the two unlike any Ray ever could have expected. Soon after they meet, the Asian man tells Ray he has been dead for 46 years, KIA in the Vietnam war.
“Asian”, as Ray soon thinks of him, explains that he is one of very few individuals caught in a parallel universe between his actual life and death. If he wishes to learn why this has happened to him, if he wants to resolve this dilemma, he must visit alternative lives he might have lived had he made different choices prior to his death. Incredulous at what Asian tells him, Ray, nonetheless, agrees to do as he says.
The lives he visits take place in the US, Antigua, Germany, Switzerland, France, Vietnam, and Rhodesia, at different times, under different circumstances. The one he lived, and some of those he would have lived had he made different choices.
He interacts with people as a young man just graduated from high school. In another, as a college graduate who chose to move to Europe rather than remain in the US, possibly drafted and sent to Vietnam. He meets women he is attracted to, marries one and fathers children. He is forced to recall his violent death in Vietnam as a soldier. After each alternative life, he finds himself back with Asian in Other Worlds, never sure what was real, what was not.
Asian guides him through the process of discovery, always giving him the opportunity to return to what he thought was his real life as an adult in Seattle. Rejecting that, he must choose the one person in the one life he would most like to have lived to be with now.
He chooses Shelly, originally from Rhodesia, who he first meets in Antigua when both are in their late teens. And later, in another life in Vietnam, after the war. Both sense something strange about themselves and each other as a couple. Something that has drawn them together. The final chapters lead them through their discovery of exactly what that is.
Everyone has countless unlived lives, this is Raymond’s story. How different would the life you lead be had you made different choices?
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