Author Interview:
M. R. Mathias
The author of
The Wardstone Trilogy
The Dragoneers Saga
The Fantastica Collection
The Legend of Vanx Malic Series
Please tell me a little about your current
work in progress.
I am
writing the first book in what I hope is a lengthy series, but that hasn’t
developed enough to talk about just yet. That isn’t my only “work-in-progress,”
though. I’m also working with narrator
Will Hahn on the Fantastica Series audiobooks. Book three, Demon of
Destruction, should be available in a few weeks, and book four (the finale)
before Thanksgiving.
Where did you get the idea for the newly
completed Dragon Racers Trilogy?
The
Dragon Racers Trilogy is based on Asian myths and lore, but the population of
the dystopian fairy land known as the Dregs, are very much like modern social
media users. They don’t need facts or even to know what is going on to take a
side. In fact they follow the mood of the most dominant being around them
instinctually. This is just one of the obstacles young Sharrah Che and her
sometimes bo, Kin Kuul must deal with. There is also mysterious Dark Anshi, her
powerful orang-eyed father, and a tyrant king all trying to bend her will.
Needless to say, there is no way to please them all, and the more determined of
them will find ways to control her decisions. Then there are the terrifying,
and often deadly, dragon races themselves.
Do you write in more than one genre?
I
wrote a horror book called The Butcher’s Boy: The Ballad of Billy Badass, under
the pen name Michael Robb. I recommend it for late October, but don’t read it
alone, especially if it is stormy. The book is pretty scary. I mean, I lull you
in with a slow and methodical “spooky” story line, then yank your stomach into
your throat with a little deep hitting evil. I may dabble in scifi in the
future, and I may even write a detective/thriller series someday, but I
currently write fantasy, both because it comes naturally, and because it pays
the bills.
Tell me about something that you believe
makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.
I
have my own style and I tell the story I am telling. There are places in my
books where I could have gone down this path or that, but I leave it and let
the reader’s mind go down those paths themselves. The best compliment I have ever received was
something like: “…even hours after reading a chapter of The Wardstone Trilogy,
I would still be caught up in the scene.” Or something like that.
Is there anything about your personal
history or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?
I
think my ability to see through the BS of life shows through. When I started
writing the old Dragoneer Saga books, one of the first things that crossed my
mind was, how would a dragon rider go to the bathroom? How would a girl dragon
rider go? Because there are two, and now three (with Jenka and Zah’s daughter,
Amelia) female dragon riders in that series.
They
don’t touch on “reality” much in Eragon, or How to Train your Dragon. Bilbo
Baggins never has to take a piss. No one tells Katniss Everdeen her breath
smells like a goblin’s ass. In my books someone who has never ridden a horse
doesn’t just take to it. Someone who has never held a sword can’t suddenly
defend themselves with one. Someone who has spent days in a dungeon has breath
they can barely stand themselves.
So many
authors create characters that never feel human. I at least try and make the fantasy have a
bit of reality in it.
What else would be helpful for readers to
know about you?
I
wrote The Wardstone Trilogy in a Texas prison while serving time for drug
possession. I was a meth junky when I was younger, and I stole all sorts of
stuff to support my habit. I did two calendar years in mostly solitary
confinement because I couldn’t get along with others. While I was there I
penned seven novels in longhand.
Not bad
for twenty plus months in a box.
Excluding your own work, what underrated
author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?
I would
recommend people into fantasy read authors like: Raymond E. Feist, Lloyd
Alexander, even Homer and the like. What
most modern authors think is new, is not new at all. They would know this if
they read more. Another benefit of my
stint in jail was sheer reading time. I was reading three to four hundred pages
a day, every day.
Which of your books do you most highly
recommend? Why?
Well,
I like The Legend of Vanx Malic, and The Dragoneer Saga best, and then there is
Fantastica, and the Dragon Racers series. And we can’t forget Crimzon and
Clover. But you asked which one I recommend, not which one I like most. If I
was being honest, the best of my work is The Wardstone Trilogy. It is raw and
unique, in that I wasn’t an author until about halfway through book two. There
is something magical about The Wardstone Trilogy. If you read it, you will
understand. It will transform you, and the characters will live with you
forever. So yeah, Wardstone is what I’d recommend.
Which break, event, decision, or
fortuitous circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?
Well,
prison helped, because without those two years I would have never found the
time or motivation to write, even though I graduated High School with a scholarship
in creative writing. When I got out I didn’t know how to type and hadn’t been
on the internet much, yet. I was a CADD designer at one point before, and I was a draftsman so I was semi-familiar with the keyboard, and took to it well enough.
The most
fortuitous circumstance came after my release from prison, and it is both sad
and uplifting. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s and my mother was her caregiver.
I stayed with them and became my grandmother’s primary caregiver so my mom
could keep doing her job. (She was a head faculty member at a notable
university, and loved her job.)
I ended
up being her caregiver too, through about five years of grueling chemo, and a
peaceful end.
Anyway,
it was during the day, while my grandmother would watch I Love Lucy and Andy
Griffith reruns that I learned to type while entering The Sword and the Dragon
into a word file to be edited. I learned about Kindle, and the KDT platform,
and the Sony Reader (now defunct) in that same time period. …which was all long
before KDP came along. And as they say, the rest is history.
What question do you wish you would get
asked more often?
I don’t
really have an answer here. Can I buy you
dinner? That question would be nice to
hear more often….lmao
Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that
you like? What is it? And why do you choose it?
Fortune
sides with him who dares. – Virgil
~*~ I dare. – M.R. Mathias
And my
favorite “me” quote:
Just
because it isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome. – M.R. Mathias
Do you think you’ll
ever write anything specifically based upon your incarceration experience? Or
have you written something of that nature already?
I always said I would after my mother died. I was involved
in some incredibly stupid antics in my day. The value of the tale has been
reduced because of groundbreaking docu-series, and shows that have since
revealed the disturbing truth about prison life. Two decades ago, when I got
out, it would have been a groundbreaking book to write, but then after my mom
read it, she would have beat my ass, and disowned me. So I made the right call.
If you had to live in
one of the worlds that you’ve created, which would you choose?
This is a great question. The answer is, I’d live in the
real world I have created, the one where I get to make stuff up in my novels,
and control the fates of all, like some god. Then people actually pay to read
it, and I get to go fishing, where I spend my time day dreaming of the next
tale to write. It is a wonderful world I
live in now.
It seems that you
really do appreciate the old writers. Do you find something enjoyable in those
old books that you don’t see in a lot of the material produced in recent years?
I see the authenticity of authors who were writing for the
love of the story as much as anything. Feist wasn’t even an author when he
started writing, Magician. What he created was a masterpiece so huge they had
to break it in half to publish it. These days everyone is striving to create
the next GoT type of series and get a piece of the eBook cash grab.
We touched on it earlier; flawless characters, or characters
with such cliché flaws as to be annoyingly inhuman, soulless. The modern “can
do anything” characters are so boring and fake.
Who is the woman in
the Wonder Woman costume in the photograph?
She is a theme park cosplayer. I do not know her name, but
she wore it well!
On which platforms
are your books available?
Currently, and for the foreseeable future my ebooks are
Kindle exclusive and available to purchase at Amazon. You can read them free
with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. The paperbacks and collectable hardcovers, are
available at all the big retailers, but mine are P.O.D. only. We don’t want
warehouses full of dead trees out there. They only print a copy after you order
it.
Share a link to your
author page on Amazon?
Are you
self-published or are you connected with a publisher?
Some of my work is published by Amazon Content Services and
I have a Non-Disclosure Agreement with them, and can say no more about it.
Other titles are published by Mathias Publishing, which you can call self
–published, or not. I don’t care what label they use. My reviews and the words
between the book covers are the proof in the pudding. In the end, I don’t think
the readers care, either.
Does writing fantasy
novels pay the bills, or do you have another job or income stream?
I have made over a million dollars in book royalties from
Amazon alone. Mind you, that is over a ten year span, so it isn’t as much as it
sounds like, but I live off of my M.R. Mathias book income. It does pay the
bills. I have a few hobbies that generate an income, too. But I have lived off
of my royalties, and plan to continue to do so, for the rest of my life.
I am an author.
If writing fantasy
novels does pay the bills, how long did it take before it did so? Is it a
product of producing enough quality books, good connections, or something else?
For me it was a combination of things like timing, a hungry
market. Bad press, and good press. In the end the story has to be good. The
Sword and the Dragon started it all, and the rest of The Wardstone Trilogy followed
through. They have been my steady biggest sellers for ten years.
As to the start… The
first month The Sword and the Dragon was available it sold 11 copies. The next month it sold like 49
copies, but it received a review from some blog called Fantasy Book Critic, and
then it sold 1300 copies and then over five thousand. So it was pretty fast for
me.
You went on a fishing
trip recently, do you have a good fish story to tell?
Yes! It was overshadowed by a similar story that someone
caught on camera and they showed on the news. But we were fishing twenty five
miles off the coast of Florida, and I hooked this huge four foot long Cobia. It
was a beast and I wanted him to fillet and take home. So I fought this guy for
half an hour, and finally got him to the boat. My friend Rob and my dad were
fishing with me. Rob went to gaf the fish, but suddenly yelled and jumped back.
In Florida the water is crystal clear and you can see fifty
feet deep, but when I looked over, I saw a ten foot long tiger shark chomping
the back half of my prized Cobia off, and it was right there at the surface.
My dad had been expressing the desire to fight a big shark,
so I jigged the dead front half of the Cobia around. It still had my hook in
its mouth, and sure enough that shark came back and ate it.
My dad fought the shark for ten minutes but we didn’t have a
steel leader and it eventually broke the line. I came home with a bunch of King
Mackerel, and some Grouper and Snapper meat, but no Cobia. I’m still sad about
losing that fish to the tax man, but seeing a wild Tiger Shark feed in your
face is pretty awesome in itself.
