Author INTERVIEW: Christopher MATSON

Christopher, thanks so much for being willing to share something of yourself. I think people will enjoy getting to know you a little better.

Hi, Matthew. Okay, quick introduction, huh? Well, to start with, I’m older than dirt—just wanted to get that bit out of the way—I’ve had many careers including mess-hall cook, commercial fisherman, miner, underground geologist, marine engineer, and most recently, international port consultant. Married forty years [checks calendar] yup, forty years. Met on a fishing boat—long story, I’ll tell it another time. I’ve since hung up my rollaboard and business suit—and settled down with my wife in a cosy little place on the water in south-eastern Virginia. These days, I write Historical Fantasy as Christopher Matson and Action/Adventure as C.B. Matson.

What made you decide to sit down and start writing? What made you say to yourself "this is what I want to do"?

Hmm…that’s complicated. Like most authors, I’ve written throughout my adult life—altogether the shower-baritone, I wrote solely for my own entertainment. Had an ancient Royal portable (heavy as a sack of bricks) and pounded out page after page of dreadful trash. Graduated to a Commodore VIC-20 in the early ‘80s (said I was older than dirt) and continued working on my “million words of crap.”

That all changed in 2013.

Does anyone remember Kindle Worlds? It legitimized fanfic by letting guest-authors publish works based on a host-author’s series—and get this—both guest-author and host-author shared in the revenue. I leaped in and cranked out over 450k words for Neal Stephenson’s “Mongoliad” series.

And lo, I had sales, followers, stars…it was a wild ride until 2018 when Mama-Zon yanked the rug out. Yup, shut the whole thing down. I can only figure that someone pooped in our nest. All kinds of stuff coulda gone wrong, probably a case of plagiarism or libel…anyway the cops came, and the party ended…rather abruptly.

Is there a genre you don't write in that you are a fan of, that you might consider writing in one day? If so, which one?

First let me wax lyrical (hysterical?) about Historical Fantasy—particularly the Byzantine Era when so much craziness is going down [author jumps up and waves arms]. I mean, the Romans are trying to keep their sh…tuff together, the Church is fractured into all these weird sects, the Zohar and cabalistic magic are on the rise, the Caliphate rages across the Levant, and in the east, the Gates of Alexander are thrown down—the Mongol Empire crosses the Volga—and all Hell thunders into Europe.

And hey, that’s just the historical part. Fantasy lurks in every corner. The old gods abide their deep fastnesses, and forgotten people flit unseen within their dark forests. Magic, incantation, amulets, and curses are a part of daily life. It takes little to wrap these elements into a story that is both immersive and believable.

But that’s not what you asked…sorry [author sits back down].

What genre would I want to write someday? Intrigue—John le Carré, Eric Ambler, John Grisham, the shoulders of giants, true, but a lot of good stories still wait to be told. I’ve got an idea for a biz-punk (just made that up) series with this rather wounded legal secretary on the run from…you’ll have to wait for it.

Who are some of your favourite writers? Either inspirational or just for entertainment?

More important may be why they are my favorites, particularly in the context of this interview. As an author (and a reader), my Holy Trinity is Bradbury-Steinbeck-Eco (all dead, yes…I know). Ray Bradbury for his evocative story lines. His narrative is almost poetic, and his plot drivers hover between sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is perhaps my fav (hah!).

Unarguably John Steinbeck is one of the greatest 20th Century American authors. I only wish I could write dialog and create characters like he did. His stories do not build high tension, or include much action, but still, reading them is like eating a warm scone with clotted cream on a lazy Sunday morning (yes I have. And for that, and for Benny Hill, I forgive the British their somewhat irrational spelling).

Umberto Eco was a phenomenon all unto himself. Professor of Italian Medieval Philosophy and Semiotics, among a gazillion other topics. He wrote faster than I can talk (which isn’t that fast…but) and his first novel, “Name of the Rose” went best-seller/movie-deal right off the presses. Eco was a Renaissance man, a true genius of words, symbols, and ideas. For the quintessential Historical Fantasy, I can strongly recommend “Baudolino.” Never could quite get into his “Kant and the Platypus,” however. But hey…he’s the genius, not me.

We always hear the expression write what you know. How much of you is in your book/s?

For me, I’d prefer to write what I don’t know. By that, I don’t mean the settings, the situations, and all. As an author, you must know and understand the details of the world you’ve built or are depicting—best if you’ve been there or someplace like it (okay, you can’t go to Planet Flobflob, but hey, maybe you’ve been to the Amazon Basin or the Atacama Desert). But if you’re writing an Action/Adventure, you’ve got to know that Glock pistols don’t have external safeties. If you’re writing Swords and Sorcery, it’s best to know a little about sword construction as well as a smattering of sorcery (I can recommend Sir Richard Burton’s “The Book of the Sword” and Sax Rohmer’s “Romance of Sorcery”).

What I mean by “write what you don’t know” refers to your characters, and the situations they get themselves into. Yes, I often steal the soul from a person I’ve met and enslave it in one of my stories. What author doesn’t? However, once I’ve released that soul into the plotline, I let them be who they are, not who I am. No “Mary Sues,” no idealized versions of myself. So yeah, I throw everything of me into my books…and nothing.

Are there any trends in current Sci-fi and Fantasy you aren't a big fan of? And conversely, trends you are really into.

Oh, I’m sooo glad you asked…DRAGONS. Have we not used, overused, smothered the bookshelves with Dragons? Sentient, benevolent Dragons and their (sorry) Mary Sue human companions? I dream of writing a novella wherein my protagonists roam from book-to-book slaughtering Dragons, from Middle-Earth, through Pern, to Westros and everywhere in between. Readers weep in despair as their favourite Dragons lay in pools of green ichor, surrounded by quivering gobbets of flesh [author laughs maniacally].

 [Takes deep breath] Oh, wait…I’m writing this so that readers will say, “his stuff sounds so interesting, I absolutely must read his books.” Sorry readers, I don’t really want you weeping. My own “Half Sword” even has a Dragon in it…okay, it’s a dead Dragon, a little one at that, but hey, I’ve got a Dragon! We good?

And then there’s those other trends. Let’s start with Romance…nothing against the genre itself, mind you. A reader picks up the bare chest and torn bodice, they know what they’re gonna get. Romance. HEA, HFN, LBGT, RomCom…Romance—and nothing wrong with that—it’s a very popular genre. But when a reader snags that cover, all swords, blood, and ravening monsters, they expect Fantasy, not Romance. So, good when Fantasy is used as an element in a Romance novel, and good when your Fantasy prots happen to cop a little lov’n on their quest. Not so good when a Romance wanders around disguised as a Fantasy. ‘Nuff said.

Since “Fifty Shades of Gray” went viral/best-seller, another trend is for an author to prop up their story’s soggy-center (soggy-centaur? Ah…centre!) with a few pages of explicit Erotica. I mean sex is good. Even Sam Gamgee begot multiple children on Rosie Cotton, but he did it off-screen. So, no explicit Erotica—no, naughty author, no, no, no. Mistress is very displeased…

As for trends I rather like…I think Grimdark. Yeah, Grimdark, and by extension, Steampunk. These relatively recent genres are gaining popularity, particularly among independent authors. Some of this year’s best SPFBO entries, in my (not very) humble opinion, were Grimdark. Try “Norylska Groans” by Michael Fletcher and Clayton Snyder. I spent enough time in early, post-Soviet Russia to know that they captured the vibe of crime, decay, and despair…brilliantly.

Like Grimdark, Steampunk has been around for a while and has attracted some good independent authors. It’s since metastasized into Dieselpunk and multiple other 19th/20th Century techno-punks. This is a very positive trend, taking Fantasy out past Sci-Fi into new realms of speculative fiction.

For any wannabe writers out there what’s the most useful thing you’ve learned?

I’d say, it’s eating with utensils. I mean, is there anything more useful than a good, sturdy knife and fork? Wait—you meant writing things—sorry. How ‘bout the em-dash? Can there be any more useful punctuation bit than the em-dash? Comma-splice, run-on sentence, interjections, they can all be fixed with an em-dash [little neglected semi-colon glowers at me from the edge of my keyboard].

But that’s not what you were really asking for either, was it? So, what advice would I give to novice authors? In asking, please remember I’m a novice author myself and probably not the most reliable source of sage advice. However, that’s never stopped me before, so here it comes anyway…

First off, before you write for publication, have a Plan. No, not a story outline (but that’s good too), a long-term plan—that is, decide what you will write now, in five years, in ten years. Figure out who your readers will be and what they enjoy. Find a way to deliver your stuff to these readers, and make sure that more and more of them can find you. Without readers, your stuff, no matter how wicked awesome, is nothin’. May as well do a shift-del on the whole thing and your backup too, ‘cause if no one reads that wonderful stuff, it doesn’t exist (of course, if you’re not writing for publication, then flail away and enjoy the crap out of it…that’s also good and we’ve all done it).

Second off, be prepared to fail. Be prepared to watch your beautiful child languish on Amazon at 3,728,942 on the Best Seller List. Gird thyself for the inevitable one-stars, or even worse, the three-star that damns with faint praise, “…this story is good, but it would have been so much better, if only it had dragons…”

But wait, it gets worse. You’ve written and re-written. You’ve hired an editor and wrangled the details, you’ve backchecked and had it proofed. You’ve paid to have your baby formatted for Kindle and Print. One last look at your custom cover and off for publication—POD and E-pub in all their manifestations. You sit back, nice hot artisanal pizza and a bottle of old-vine zin. Life is good. Time goes by. Your next WIP awaits, and you dig in. Author-copies arrive, and they go on the shelf (okay, Mom gets one, but she never reads it). Then one day you think, I wonder how it feels to read my own book? So, you open it up. Right there—page one, line three—a big ol’ typo. Next line, “your” instead of “you’re.” You read through in horror…this doesn’t even make sense. The entirety of Chapter 23 is missing. Last page, your author pic is a blurry frame from a cat GIF. It happens, get used to it.

So how do I know these things? [Again, the maniacal laugh, much writhing. After a while, author regains control] Yup, been that, done there…gonna probably do it some more. It’s part of the biz.

Are you a plotter or a pantser (make it up as you go)?

I’ll be a bit of a contrarian on this and ask, what’s the dif? Consider the pantser who blithely writes away, churning out a jumbled-up mess of a rough draft, then edits, rewrites, re-edits, and re-rewrites until voilà, a masterpiece emerges. Meanwhile, the plotter carefully builds a world, populates it with character descriptions, creates story arcs and tension maps, churning out a jumbled-up mess of an outline, then writes, edits, rewrites, re-edits, and re-rewrites, until voilà, a masterpiece emerges. Fundamentally, the same process. Note that both approaches rely on extensive rewrites…fail that and neither way will work for you.

So, what’s my personal writing process? I like to create a short list of chapter headings, maybe a few plot points in each. A little world building maybe, some site locations, a couple of main characters…then I turn ‘em loose and let ‘em cause trouble. Nothing stays the same while the initial draft develops. However, at about the 75% point, I skip forward and write the “grand kablooie,” the final confrontation. I’ll go back then and fill in the blanks, add a prologue if needed, and a denouement (always needed). Another pass or two through the working draft, and then I shelve the project for as long as I can stand it. A few weeks later, take it down and patch the plot-holes I missed on first go-round. Does that make me a plotster, or panster, or what? Donno.

Tell us a little bit about your latest project and the challenges you’ve faced putting it all together?

Not strictly Fantasy, I’m presently working on a new Action/Adventure for David Wood. Um…okay, it’s got the lyre of Orpheus, magic wands (I mean, believable magic wands…trust me), ancient gods and goddesses (bad ones), and a horrifying descent into the fiery wastes of Abaddon itself…but in a realistic way. That is, with flying instructions for a C-130, Heckler & Koch machine pistols, and all that.

Challenges? Besides trying to keep it exciting and realistic with all that ancient lore and stuff, how hard can it be? Actually, the biggest challenge with this one has been that little voice inside screaming, it’s crap…it’s crap…it’s all craaap!! [for cri-yi, it’s a first draft you little butthead, so shuddup]. Sends me off to watch cat videos it does.

I don’t have a title yet…working title is “Baal,” but that could change. Oh wait, I did build a lyre for the project. As I said earlier, I need some physical connection with the story, and since I couldn’t off and fly out to the Danakil Desert, I wandered out to my shop (okay, I’m lazy too). Actually, it’s a seven-string kinnor, an ancient type of lyre in use since at least 3500 BCE (no, I have no idea how to play it—there are some good instruction vids on U-Tube, if I could just stop watching those stupid cats).

So, it’s kind of an Action/Adventure/Historical/Fantasy genre-blender sorta thing…my previous two books for David were similar. Generally well received, I did get dinged for being a bit heavy on the fantasy side. Too bad, that’s how I ride.

Last year I finished the first of my Tapestry series, “Half Sword.” A lot of research goes into all my books, and I think I nailed the late 12th Century era (my editor fixed one historical name). All of the fantasy elements from question three are cooked into the story as well as that rather dead baby dragon. Normally I don’t write dragons and other fantasy tropes. However, this particular dragon’s mama is part of the historical 9th Century Krakow city lore, so how could I resist?

Look at her—the Wawel dragon—ain’t she cute? Died rather ignominiously at the hands of a local shepherd, but we can’t all be St. George. “Half Sword” is out now on Amazon and I want to release “Baal” (or whatever it’s gonna be called) by midsummer. But like Mick once said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

What’s your favourite fantasy/sci-fi franchise?

Okay, here’s my chance to connect with my readers, or alienate the few who managed stick it out this far. I’m gonna start with Science Fiction because I haven’t read much lately, so I can dig up an old one that won’t offend too many sensibilities. How ‘bout John Varley’s Gaea Trilogy?  He weaves plot-tension, character development, humour, and world building into a very immersive set of stories. Oh, and strong, relatable female characters that do not follow the usual tropes. Excellent read, especially for those who like a bit of Fantasy in their SF.

Fantasy, hmm…now that’s a bit tougher. I’ve read the big ‘uns, Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire, and Stormlight Archive (gaah…will Sanderson ever finish it?). I’m currently into Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. Looks like his third book, “Doors of Stone” will reach print this year. Yay!!

Soo…pick one. [Author points to a row of battered volumes at the bottom of his bookcase] Those, Lord of the Rings including “The Hobbit” and “Silmarillian.”

What a cop-out! you say. Nope, not in the slightest. Exquisitely crafted, immersive, memorable, accessible to all ages, Lord of the Rings rules them all. It’s the only Fantasy series I’ve read again, then again, and then once more to my kids. If I can pick only one series, that’s gotta be the one.

So Christopher, any concluding thoughts?

Well, yeah…lots of ‘em considering I’ve only got about two more decades in me before skerrrk, lights out. Oh, you mean for this interview. First (and most important) it’s been fun, thanks! Second, if you have enjoyed my rambling thoughts, you probably shouldn’t read my books. They’re written in a totally different style.

However, if you’ve built up a towering rage because of what I’ve said, then buy my books, read ‘em, and leave scathing reviews. Then go out and buy more. Encourage your friends to buy them and hold a public book burning. Do it every weekend—you’ll feel so much better—I promise.

You can all go straight to…Amazon. Yeah, Amazon and buy as many copies of “Half Sword” as you need right here: http://mybook.to/Half_Sword. It’s still available on Kindle Unlimited too, so you could load up your E-reader with copies and throw that on the bonfire. Much more efficient, don’t you think? Oh, and be sure to leave those scathing reviews.

You can also leave a snarky remark on my Facebook page, https://tinyurl.com/2h6fx4xe or troll me on any number of Facebook Groups, including EPIC, IFA, and WRAGT. I have since abandoned Twitter—Twitter, you are so DEAD to me!—Elon Musk can use you for toilet paper, for all I care (sorry, had to get that in).

Even better, I’ve finally tinkered up my webpage so it kinda works okay (or I hope it will by the time you read this). You can go to www.cbmatson.com and find all my books, plus works in progress and other cool stuff (as soon as I figure out what that’s gonna include). And if anyone knows how to make WordPress be-haave…gaah, it’s so frustrating. ‘Nuff said. Back to work.