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#222 - Simon Mason
4 Plays4 minutes ago
Adult crime/thriller/mystery and children's author, Simon Mason is on the podcast chatting about his latest works as well as his experiences over three decades of writing and working within the publishing industry.
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Transcript
Introduction of Simon Mason and his work
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong Podcast. On today's episode, I am very excited to be joined by a critically acclaimed writer of adult and children's fiction who's been publishing novels for over three decades, as well as spending some time managing a publishing house.
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Simon Mason. Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for for coming on. um Let's jump right in. So much to talk about. But first things first, we always like to start these episodes by talking about the latest and upcoming publications.
00:00:46
Speaker
You are a busy man when it comes to writing. You've already had one novel out this year in January, and that was the fourth D.I. Ryan Wilkins book.
00:00:57
Speaker
Before we talk about the upcoming novel, tell us a little bit about Ryan Wilkins and that series and those books. Okay, so um I call these the Ryans, but there are two main characters, both called Wilkins, rather confusingly. Ryan Wilkins and Ray Wilkins.
00:01:13
Speaker
Ryan, if you saw Ryan in the street ah wearing baggy tracky bottoms and a loop jacket and baseball cap and a bit of bling and a can of energy drink, you you would start to make assumptions. you would You would think he's, you know, he's probably got a big dog on a chain back in his caravan and he's probably been in and out of jail a bit, never done a day's work in his life and has three or four different kids with different mothers he never sees.
00:01:41
Speaker
He's probably a member of the criminal classes. But you would be wrong because although he grew up in a trailer park, his father's violent alcoholic, he has become a detective inspector at Thames Valley Police.
Discussion on the Finder series
00:01:55
Speaker
um He has a partner called Ray Wilkins and he is exactly the opposite. So he is, a start, he's black. He's London Nigerian heritage.
00:02:06
Speaker
He is privately educated went to Oxford, double first PPE, Balliol College, um debating trophy, boxing blue, very handsome, um very articulate, very smooth and suave and very well-dressed.
00:02:23
Speaker
And their partners, um and you wouldn't think they would get on, and they don't. And that's basically the concept behind all these books. they They find themselves working together, um the chav and the posh boy.
00:02:39
Speaker
and And, you know, it's a situation I thought was it had dramatic possibilities. Yes, absolutely. it's the It's the forced proximity of two people who would probably, in no other circumstance circumstance, spend time with each other.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. and And it's a very traditional concept, this sort of mismatch pairing, yeah not not just in crime, but whether it's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza or Jeeves and Worcester or whatever, you know, the literature is full of these sorts of mismatches.
00:03:08
Speaker
I mean, in crime, it's the buddy cop thing, right? Yes. And so I'm riffing on that. I'm riffing slightly blind because I don't read a lot of crime fiction, but I'm sort of vaguely aware of it.
00:03:20
Speaker
Okay. And that was ah that's already out. that's The fourth book in that series came out in January. Upcoming this year on June 5th, I think it is, The Woman Who Laughed is coming out and that's part three in your Finder series.
00:03:35
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about that series and where that novel sits within it. Yes. So um i'd written I'd written the first of the Ryans. No, the first of the Ryans had been published and I'd just finished the second of the Ryans.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I really liked doing both of them. theyre They're sort of quite chunky. for me anyway, 80,000, 90,000 words long, they're sort of action driven, they're um third person telling, they're all set in Oxford.
00:04:04
Speaker
um And I suddenly had the urge to write something completely different. So it comes, the finder books come out of this need for variety as a writer.
00:04:17
Speaker
So they're they're the opposite of the Ryans. They're first-person narration. They're told by the main character. Each is set in a different city, not in ah the same city. They're very short, 40,000 words, not 80,000 words.
00:04:31
Speaker
and They're less action driven, they're more character driven. And instead of being crime, they are missing persons novels. And so the conceit here is that someone has gone missing in the past, the police have investigated.
00:04:49
Speaker
They've concluded that they can't find the person and that the person is is really likely no longer to be alive and they've closed the
Simon's writing process and genres
00:04:58
Speaker
case. And then several years later, a new piece of evidence emerges and the police need to reactivate the case because it now looks like that person might not be dead, but might still be alive somewhere. And so they call in a freelance person to help them find the ah the missing person.
00:05:17
Speaker
and And so I have a character who tells the story. I call him Finder and and his police colleagues call him Finder, but he's a freelance specialist in finding people. And he is brought in by any police force that that has a case that they need solving, but their budgets are ah too tight to to take it on in-house.
00:05:37
Speaker
and And he comes in and the story then is told by him. And it's the investigation into the missing person. And hes he's he's a character who is very empathetic.
00:05:49
Speaker
He's a listener. And he has an idea that the best place to look for a missing person is in the memories and imaginations of the people who knew that missing person best.
00:06:02
Speaker
And so he spends a lot of time talking to people and listening to their stories involving the missing person to to try and work out what sort of person they were and what decisions they might have made to lead him to try and find them.
00:06:17
Speaker
Okay. That's interesting. So, Both the series are within a sort of similar sphere. They they are sort of um mystery, police orientated um things, but from a very different direction and from very different characters.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yes, exactly. So when when I thought to myself, oh, I need to write something very different, I did not want to write, say, ah straightforward literary novel, which I've done in the past, actually. ah That's how I began, by writing literary novels.
00:06:46
Speaker
I wanted to write something that might not be crime, but which had what you might call a narrative engine. And, you know, you've identified it. It's a mystery. Yeah. um the yeah the The reader is on a journey with the characters in in the book to discover something that's gone gone wrong, something that's hidden, something that needs to be uncovered.
00:07:07
Speaker
um i I ought to say that I wrote the first finder really for my own refreshment. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. And then I sent it to my agent and he rang me up and he said, what's this?
00:07:22
Speaker
Are you having a laugh? some sort Is this some sort of joke? Simon, I'm just about to negotiate a new contract for some police procedurals.
00:07:34
Speaker
And now you've thrown this spanner into the works with something completely different. and And I said, I'm really sorry. And he said, well, for what for God's sake, don't send it to the editor.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I had to say, I'm really sorry. I've already sent it. So he he he not everyone was pleased with this development in in my writing, I've got to say. Anyway, i was very fortunate. My editor liked the Finders as well as as well as the Ryans.
00:08:00
Speaker
Okay. Okay. That's a funny story. But in terms of these series, do you, are they written so that you need to have read them in order or are they written so that you could sort of jump in ah any of them and and you would be able to catch up quickly with what's going on?
00:08:18
Speaker
I think the idea is, and and always has to be really in a series, that you can pick up any book in the series and and read it on its own terms as a self-contained narrative.
00:08:31
Speaker
So I would hope that's true of of of all the books in both series.
Writing children's and young adult novels
00:08:35
Speaker
Having said that... he um ah ah Any writer of series is is also faced with the issue of how to proceed in terms of chronology.
00:08:47
Speaker
So you've basically, as I see it, got two choices. One is every book is completely separate. um Lee Child does that, I think, pretty much with Jack Reacher.
00:09:00
Speaker
Or you have the books arranged in chronological order so that although each title is a self-contained narrative, nevertheless, it takes place sequentially in time.
00:09:12
Speaker
And i I chose to do that with the Ryans. So in other words, the second book, The Broken Afternoon, takes place in the months immediately after the events of the first book, A Killing in November.
00:09:26
Speaker
And the reason I did that was, in some ways, it it poses more problems for a writer, but yeah what it gives you the opportunity of exploring a developing relationship between your ongoing characters.
00:09:41
Speaker
And I was really keen to... to do that one of the things about both ryan and ray is that their parents um ryan has a little boy uh also called ryan a little ryan and uh and ray has twins and and they're growing up so i i wanted to i wanted to make their growing up and the changing relationships they have with their fathers is part of the part of the ongoing story Oh, okay.
00:10:10
Speaker
So there is, you could read these in any order, but there is um sort of something kind of ticking along if you do read them in in the chronological order.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I don't want to say, oh, look, you've got to begin at the beginning because that's that's not true. You you could read any book. But if you begin at the beginning and then proceed to read the second one and third one, then you will get the full force of this overarching ongoing narrative.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yes. Okay. that That's, that's really interesting. Um, and I want to touch on, you've mentioned that the reason you started the finder series is because you wanted to mix things up. You wanted just a bit of variety, but I know that prior to this, and you mentioned you'd written literary fiction. and You've also written children's novels. You've written across multiple different styles, but I'd love to focus on the children's novels parts of it.
00:11:01
Speaker
What made you want to, cause you started in adult and you're currently writing adult. What made you want to write for younger audiences? Yeah, um we had children. that's That's what happened. My wife and I had children and suddenly our world was children oriented. house was full of children. I mean, dozens and dozens. of It turns out there are only two.
00:11:22
Speaker
at the time, you know, it did seem like an absolute household And, um, I think I must be the sort of writer who writes, likes to write what's around him.
00:11:33
Speaker
Um, you know, I don't fly off and and set my books in strange places and I, I, I don't really, I don't set them in the past, for instance. Maybe I hate research. Maybe that's it. just, it's an aspect of laziness.
00:11:46
Speaker
I write about what I can see from the room in which I write and what I could see was children. And so I was interested in in what they were doing. And I was also, of course, like any parent, reading children's stories to my children as they grew up.
00:12:04
Speaker
And again, I'm quite imitative. So i was reading these children's books and thinking, these are fantastic. You know, these authors are just wonderful. They can do stuff with a a limited vocabulary.
00:12:17
Speaker
um and And the literary effects that they they can create are just marvellous. I wonder if I could do something similar. and And so I started writing, first of all, for for very young readers, readers who are just beginning to read on their own or just still sharing stories with parents, seven to nine-year-olds.
00:12:41
Speaker
So I wrote four books um about a family family. ah called The Quigglers, which to be honest, and they were just really autobiographical stories, um which was slightly awkward because I remember the first reviews coming out saying, oh very nice comic stories about totally hapless parenting.
00:13:01
Speaker
And my wife and I were a bit pissed off with that. but ah Nevertheless, it was true that they were autobiographical. Then I wrote um a middle grade novel, what the Americans call middle grade, eight to 12 year old.
00:13:14
Speaker
and And then I wrote YA books, young adult. I've never met anyone who calls themselves a young adult, to be honest, but um it's a publishing and, I don't know, critical term.
00:13:25
Speaker
And um i my books, in other words, grew up at the same rate my own children were growing up, just lagging a few years behind. And um so again, I think it's an aspect of me writing about what's around me.
00:13:41
Speaker
okay I was interested in my children at at each stage, but I've got to say, I mean, there'll be people maybe listening to this who are also um members of the Teenager Survivors Club.
00:13:52
Speaker
um But the teenage years were just extraordinary. And if I think of the most bizarre and wonderful things in the world. You know, I don't know what, quantum mechanics or the Chrysler building or Trump.
00:14:10
Speaker
You know, i think teenagers just top the lot. They're just like these extraordinary exploding devices out in the world, you know, discovering themselves and the world around them. And I i remember I remember just being completely engaged with those books because I felt i was dealing with totally flammable material.
00:14:34
Speaker
Okay. Sort of burn after reading material. Yeah. God. Did you ever, did did your children read the novels as they were coming out? Because it sounds like you were writing kind of for their age.
00:14:46
Speaker
um Yeah, that's a good question. I, I remember when I first read them the first Quigley's stories and they said, they i mean, children are wonderful readers.
00:14:58
Speaker
They're so direct and honest. You know, if you're reading something to them and it's a bit boring, they'll shout out, you're boring. More jokes. Get on with it. Anyway, they they shouted out, hang on, stop, stop, stop.
00:15:10
Speaker
this is us, isn't it? This is our stories. And my son, who was then only about six, said, there must be copyright issues involved here. Do we not have some sort of image rights or something? I can't remember the vocabulary he was using. But anyway, he was quite concerned was stealing.
00:15:26
Speaker
um Whether they read them then, yeah i think I think they did read them. And I think they certainly read They read one of the YA books.
00:15:38
Speaker
I don't think they were desperate to read them, to be honest. um They sort did they even like the idea of them? I don't know. I should ask them, shouldn't I i mean, now now they're enormous and, and you know, ah somehow older than I am. I don't understand how that happened. But they know more about the world than I ever did anyway.
00:15:58
Speaker
okay And I don't think they're unhappy to be in the books. Okay, right. Was it just the middle grade ones that was sort of more autobiographical? with The YA ones was a bit more fiction-leaning?
00:16:12
Speaker
yeah um Yes. I mean, and and yes, the the very early ones were were really autobiographical. the The middle grade, which was about an 11-year-old girl looking after an alcoholic father, I like to think that's that's not at all autobiographical.
00:16:29
Speaker
um And then the YA books, the stories were not... autobiographical at all. In fact, they were crime stories. So that's when I first started writing crime for a YA audience.
00:16:42
Speaker
Although the the main character is is is based very closely on a friend of my son's. he's some He's basically a slacker genius called Garvey Smith. 16-year-old boy, bright as anything.
00:16:56
Speaker
You know, highest IQ ever recorded in his school, worst grades ever, just totally lazy. you know which is a of Which is a type of boy really well represented in life, um but I felt less well represented in literature.
00:17:10
Speaker
um When I used to go into schools and stuff, I'd talk to teachers and they'd say, we've got dozens of these kids. Yeah. Yeah. These boys, you can't get them to do anything, but they're bright as anything.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah. There was a guy I was at school with who, um, uh, and he still talks about it to this day. i remember one time we all got our grades back and it, uh, my school, they did the letter was your, um, the letter was your, like how, how accurate you were. And the number was your effort that you put in. And he once got an a five and he still talks about it to this day. Yeah.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. You see, they are, they're thick on the ground in real life, yeah but you don't read about them too much. No, because I guess it's not, it's not. Well, obviously you've made it work into a story and you can make an interesting character out of it, but it's not that interesting to watch someone.
00:18:03
Speaker
It's a Mary Sue basically, right? They're succeeding at everything with no effort. Yes. So I must be careful now to say something so that your listeners don't get the impression that the books are really dull.
00:18:16
Speaker
um ah so So the books are crime. and And the conceit here is Garvey Smith. Brightest but laziest boy you've ever met. um Disenchanted, disaffected with everything.
00:18:30
Speaker
but I mean, why why should he bother doing anything? Because the world's ah a piece of cheap carpet fluff. You know, he's got no faith in in anything. What would get him out of bed? A murder. when When the body of his ex-girlfriend ah is pulled out of Pike Pond dressed in her running kit, he gets interested in that because he's got the sort of brain that can look at look at the detail and spot things. you know And so while everyone else is going, oh my God, this is terrible, she was out running and someone's attacked her and assaulted her and killed her.
00:19:04
Speaker
um He's thinking to himself, I don't think they're her shoes. because the color scheme doesn't fit and she was always very color coordinated and so he gets involved in working it out as a puzzle he's a mathematics person he's got that sort of analytical brain um so anyway hopeful hopefully it's not quite as dull as as it might have been but that That makes it sound more like in my head to compare it to something that I'm familiar with, everyone's familiar with, is that a lot of the iterations of Sherlock Holmes are much more like that, where he's essentially disinterested and lazy.
00:19:39
Speaker
But then when he becomes interested, he becomes motivated to actually investigate things. ah ah Exactly that. And unlike Sherlock as as as well, he doesn't he doesn't reveal what what he's working out necessarily. So there is always the mystery of he can't really be asked
Desert island book choices
00:19:56
Speaker
to do that. He doesn't bother with explanations. He just comes up with startling statements but at the end of the process of him analysing a situation.
00:20:06
Speaker
And um ah so, yes, and and he's anarchic, you know, so eat he smokes a bit of puff and and all sorts of stuff. And the investigating officer on these cases, because there's more than one in the end, ah is ah is a Sikh detective who who is a stickler for the rules.
00:20:26
Speaker
And so, you again, you've got a mismatched couple actually thinking about it between the anarchic, rule-breaking Garvey Smith and Raminder Singh, who is the the very upright and uptight Sikh policeman.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yes, because I think as all writers know, you get the most fun conflict when you have two people that are inherently at odds with each other. Yeah. So I'm thinking again, and I think probably always I'm thinking of, of dramatic possibility well first and foremost. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a great way to approach it. And I think, yeah, a, a very, um, well-trodden path to approaching how to like design characters and put them together and stuff.
00:21:08
Speaker
Um, We are at the point in the episode where I um take all of your things and push you out into the sea and ask you, Simon, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:21:23
Speaker
Very good question. I've got to cope with my panic at the thought of being alone on a desert island to begin with, because ah ah ah would I read anything or would I just break down and spend all day weeping? i If I had a book, though, i would it would be Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
00:21:45
Speaker
okay And I choose that because, well, for a number of reasons, but what one is... I would be pretty sad, I think. So I'd want and i want to be entertained.
00:21:57
Speaker
I'd want something to cheer me up. I'd want something that made me laugh and and just grin with pleasure. So, you know, there are other books that you would argue perhaps are greater. But if I took...
00:22:12
Speaker
It would be such an effort to get through it, to be honest. So I'd be frightened of doing that. Vanity Fair would just give me that bit of uplift every time I i read it. And it would give me uplift, I think, because...
00:22:26
Speaker
It's got everything. It's a bit like life. You know, it's got a capaciousness that most novels lack. um that In terms of the characters, it's got a vast array of different characters, all of them sort of fantastically interesting, the major ones, the minor ones.
00:22:45
Speaker
At its heart, of course, Becky Sharp, the original artful Little Minx. i would I would basically be interested in anything that she does. And she's a fabulous, absorbing character.
00:22:59
Speaker
um It tells you an awful lot about the society in which it's set. Its literary technique is fantastic, this idea of the narrator as a sort of historical tour operator.
00:23:11
Speaker
um The tone is is wonderful. It gets me grinning when I go back to it. And I think that's really what I would need on my desert island. Yeah, that's great.
00:23:21
Speaker
I think a first as well. I don't think anyone else has has chosen Vanity Fair. I'm surprised. um so What do they usually choose? um To be honest, it's a pretty good spread. I would say the the most popular author is Jane Austen.
00:23:36
Speaker
Right. yeah She gets a lot of representation on the island. yeah um Yeah. thes She's a good one. yeah you Trouble with Austen, maybe. I thought about Austen because i I love her novels, but they are quite short.
00:23:50
Speaker
but if you're on If you're on a desert island, then you you read it in a day and then you go back and read it again and you can do that for a limited number of days. But Vanity Fair is is big compared to that.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And but a great choice as well is you said that you'd be worried about the fact that you were alone. Like you said, Vanity Fair has such a ah a wide array of characters. It's such a huge cast. Like there's so many people there to keep you company, to kind of put you back in the middle of being surrounded by people and the hustle bustle.
00:24:19
Speaker
yeah That's a very good point. Yeah, I ah hadn't consciously thought of that. But that is that must be a reason why I've chosen it as as well. Yes, a bustle of people around me on my desert island.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yes, it's not a lonely book. No.
00:24:36
Speaker
Amazing. Well, a great choice. um And yeah, like i said, a first for the podcast. What's your choice? um People do sometimes throw this back at me. My usual go-tos are because I grew up on Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, and they are my kind of my home and my hearth in some ways when it comes to writing stuff. So it would it would probably either be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or...
00:25:03
Speaker
um one of terry pratchett's probably small gods is the one that really resonates with me right so very whimsical very sort of light-hearted but with just like very heartfelt i think especially terry pratchett's so heartfelt douglas adams is is incredibly smart beneath all the whimsy so those those are two novels that i just absolutely adore And both, I can't say anything really, because I haven't read either, but they're known, right, for their humour?
00:25:34
Speaker
Yes, they are very silly and very whimsical, but also very, a very I would say, very British humour as well. ah right um I would absolutely recommend trying out, at least trying out The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's excellent. I adore that novel.
00:25:53
Speaker
So when you say that, sorry to badger you now, are you talking about one book or are you talking about a trilogy of books? Well, technically, The Hitchhiker's Guide is a trilogy of five, and which kind of, that kind of tells you vaguely what the humour of the book is like. um The first one for me is absolutely the best one, outstanding. And you can read the first one very much as a standalone book.
00:26:18
Speaker
ah The sequels are also good, but the first one for me is like the really special one. And that's the one you're taking to Desert Island, or are you allowing yourself for all five? Well, I guess I could cheat and I could just take them all.
00:26:32
Speaker
But I would, I would take the first one is the priority. It's the most important one. i think most people I've spoken to have said the same thing where they're like, the first one is the the kind of pride and joy of the whole thing. And you don't necessarily need to read the other ones. They are fun. They are good. But the first one is the best.
00:26:47
Speaker
Okay, very good recommendation. Thank you. It's very short. is is the only The only holdback about taking it to the desert island is that it is very short, but I absolutely adore it. So I
Conclusion and Patreon mention
00:26:58
Speaker
think it probably has to be there.
00:26:59
Speaker
So next up ah in the episode, I've got some questions about um more publishing industry stuff, how Simon first broke in as a writer and how things have changed over the years.
00:27:11
Speaker
That's going to be in the extended episode available at patreon.com slash right and wrong. so um And it's just much more interesting. You know, there's more to think about. You know, yeah've you've got you've got a handle on on ah a much bigger variety of stuff going on. And that's always exciting.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yes, yes, absolutely. um And that brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you so much, Simon, for for coming on the podcast and telling me all about everything you've been up to and and your kind of like incredible experience with writing and publishing um over the years. It's been really, really, really, really interesting chatting with you.
00:27:48
Speaker
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. And for anyone listening, um all four of the D.I. Ryan Wilkins books are out right now. You can go get those in all the usual places. And The Woman Who Laughed, the third installment of the Finder series, is out on June 5th.
00:28:04
Speaker
To support this podcast, like, follow, subscribe, join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes, and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again to Simon. Thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.