Authors on the Map: Joe Mahoney (Prince Edward Island)
It is a slow Tuesday afternoon and I am putting together a list of books set in Prince Edward Island for The Reading Passport. I have included the obligatory entries for LM Montgomery. But I am not satisfied. I am looking for other books set in the province that I might not have heard of before. Trying to complete this quest, I find a book that mentions time travel and I am rapidly jotting down the title and the author's name. The book is A Time and A Place, and the author is Joe Mahoney.
As I became acquainted with Joe's books, curiosity got the best of me and I contacted him about interviewing him for the blog. I was full of hope when I pressed the send button; however, I know authors are busy creators and it was probable I was not going to get an answer. Not only Joe answered me, he answered me within 30 minutes. By the end of that same day he had graciously answered all my questions. Now, this should not give you the wrong impression that Joe has nothing else better to do than answer emails from idle fans. Joe has a full time job, a family with which he loves to spend time, and a writing career. But Joe is a gem of a writer and a gentleman, a genuine guy who allowed me to correspond with him for an afternoon. I am honored and humbled to be able to share our conversation here.
Grettel from Two Book Ramblers (G): When and how did you find out you wanted to be an author?
Joe Mahoney (JM): I don't think I ever discovered I wanted to be an author. I think I always was, just as soon as I could write. I started writing my own stories, and really enjoying doing so, since I was ten years old. I still have many of my early stories. I thought they were pretty good back then. Now I see I had a lot to learn! And I still do.
G: On average, how long does it take you to write a book? Which one of your books you have written in the shortest amount of time?
JM: My first published book, A Time and a Place (which was not the first book I tried to write) took me a long time to write. I wrote the first six pages in my twenties. I wrote the first three chapters in my thirties. It wasn't until 2005, when I was forty, that I got serious about it and wrote the entire book. But then I took the next twelve years revising it. That's mainly because I haven't been able to write full time. I have a family, and a day job to support that family. My second book is a collection of short stories called Other Times and Places (in an obvious nod to A Time and a Place). I wrote the first of those stories when I was twenty-two and I don't even remember when I wrote the last one. Probably in my thirties. But I didn't publish the collection until I was in my fifties. So that book also took a long time. I have a memoir about working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation coming out soon called Adventures in the Radio Trade. The events of the memoir took twenty years to live and thirty years to write about. You're probably beginning to see a pattern here; it has, so far, taken me a long time to write each book. I'm finishing up another book now called Captain's Away that I started when I was fifty-two and that I intend to finish this year, when I'm fifty-eight. So that may turn out to be my fastest book, assuming I can finish it on schedule. However, it usually take me eleven years longer to finish a book than I say it will. I'm not very reliable that way.
G:. Do you have any routine, or a special place and time to write?
JM: Absolutely not. Out of necessity I write anywhere, anytime. I will write snippets on my cellphone, on pieces of paper. I will write half a sentence and then stop to perform some obligation. I wrote most of A Time and a Place on the Go Train, commuting back and forth to work. I also wrote it beside swimming pools while my daughters took swimming lessons, and in art galleries, and bakeries, and some sitting on the couch at home, and on planes, and so on.
G: The premise of A Time and A Place is very enticing, at least for a time travel junky like myself. How did you come up with it? Is this how you usually come up with ideas for books or was A Time and A Place an outlier?
JM: Gee, that's a good question. I don't remember precisely how time travel came into it. But I know myself and my method well enough to know that it was probably something like this. I expect I got to the first time travel part and the hero, Barnabus J. Wildebear, woke up in a strange place and I thought to myself, now, where is he? And I realized that he was in the past. But although that sounds arbitrary, it's not, really. It had to make sense that he was in the past. It had to make sense. It had to be supported by other story elements. Because for me writing a novel is a gigantic puzzle, one that I have enormous fun solving. It's a puzzle where you create the pieces yourself and then have to put them all together yourself. And at the end of the day it all has to paint one big picture that both makes sense and is compelling. But to answer your specific question further, the more I thought about the time travel elements of A Time and a Place (and this I do remember specifically) the more I realized that they were, at least to a certain degree, unique. I wasn't seeing them whole lot in the movies and television shows I was watching or the books I was reading. Spoiler alert: I'm talking about presenting time travel as inflexible (no multiple universes here) and the idea that something or someone (such as Sebastian) can exist without having a precise beginning (you will see that concept in Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home, but although I saw that movie before writing A Time and a Place, I only noticed it there after I finished writing the book. That doesn't bother me; we stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say.)
G: The setting for A Time and A Place is Prince Edward Island, a location with its place in the literature map thanks to L. M. Montgomery. Were you living in PEI while writing A Time and A Place? How did writing A Time and A Place change this place for you?
JM: I was born in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, but only lived there a year before my parents moved the family to the neighbouring province of Prince Edward Island. I grew up in Summerside, Prince Edward Island so I know that part of the island well. I wrote A Time and a Place almost entirely while living in Toronto, Canada. In the first draft, it's set in a fictional island, but I realized quickly that setting it in a real place (at least most of the parts that take place on Earth) gave the book a pleasing solidity. I enjoyed mapping events to real locations in and around Summerside. The Blue Shank Road, for example. I've always loved that name. And setting the accident on Water Street outside Samuel's Coffee House, a favourite local haunt. I'm waiting for someone to tell the owners of Samuel's that their shop is featured in a book. Maybe I'll get a free coffee one day. We can dream. :-)
G: Your second book’s title is Other Times and Places, sounding like a sequel or at least related to A Time and A Place. Are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book, or do you want each of your books to stand mostly on its own?
JM: Every story in Other Times and Places, which consists of stand alone short stories, was written either before or during the writing of A Time and a Place. So no, there's no connection between the two apart from the name. I just thought it was an apt name coming as it did on the heels of the publication of A Time and a Place. But A Time and a Place is connected to two other novels. I'm almost finished Captain's Away, which is set in the same universe as A Time and a Place and features one of the same characters and the descendants of others. And there's a third novel which exists mostly in my head right now that also exists in that universe. I've written the first few pages of that book. Each book will be a stand alone book, though; you don't have to have read one to appreciate the others. I consider them companion novels, shared universe novels.
G: The first line for A Time and A Place welcomes the reader immediately into the setting of your book, as if we just arrived by air into PEI. How do you decide what line is going to introduce your books?
JM: "I greeted Doctor Humphrey at Charlottetown's modest airport." That line was not in the first draft. It might have been in the twentieth; I'd have to check. I rewrote that first paragraph, and that first chapter, a thousand times. I don't recommend that, I don't think it's the most professional way to go about writing a book, not if you want to make a living at it. But I read a lot, and I had a certain bar in my mind regarding the level of quality I was after. And I could not stop writing the book until I felt I'd hit that bar. So every sentence, every word, every paragraph, every chapter, the whole damned thing had to work for me before I was satisfied with it. And THEN it had to please not just one but two professional editors and then myself again. It was a long, arduous, but ultimately satisfying process. I'm happy with the finished product.
G: I came across A Time and A Place while I was putting together a list of books set in PEI. I was sold on it immediately, I told you I am a time travel junky. But if I had not been sold on it already, reading your own review of it in Goodreads would have done it for me. This is the best book review I have read by an author, ever. I am extremely appreciative of humor as a reader. I would venture a guess and say that humor is essential for you as a writer, is this correct?
JM: Humour. Sometimes it gets me in trouble. I like to joke. I'm always looking for the funny line, the quip, not just in my writing but in life. I often have to bite my tongue. Some of my favourite people are my favourite people because we like to make one another laugh. A lot. So humour is definitely an important part of my work as a writer. But it's not the be all end all. Often it's not even in the first draft. It'll show up in the seventh, carefully crafted. First the plot has to make sense, and then the characters have to feel real, and then the story itself has to be compelling, and only then does the humour start to creep in. I'm not going for the laugh in my novels, I prefer them to sneak up on you, carefully nestled in between suspense and pathos. I think they're funnier that way, when you're not expecting a laugh. The review you're referring to is a different beast, though. When I write something like that I'm out to amuse myself, and if others find it funny too, then great! I also find the whole concept of book reviews kind of problematic. You spend twelve years writing a novel, put a massive amount of effort into it, and then someone can trash it in a few hastily written, ill-considered sentences. And you can't respond because that's bad form and will just set you up for a world of hurt. But you can make fun of the whole process, which is completely my style, so writing that satirical review was a lot of fun.
G: I can feel some influences from Ursula K. LeGuin and Douglas Adams in your writing, but maybe this is only a reflection of my reading life, not yours. Are there any authors you look up to?
JM: I admire both LeGuin and Adams a great deal, so I'm pleased you detect their influence in my writing. There are a lot of authors I admire. Off the top of my head, Tim Powers, James Michener, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Charles Wilson. But there are also many books I love by authors that have only had one or two books in them. I just read Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi (with Bernadette Brennan). What a terrific book. Tinkerbelle by Robert Manry. Nothing to do with speculative fiction, these books, but really great reads. I could go on and on!
G: I recently found out there is an audiobook version of A Time and A Place. Is the audiobook narrated by you? again, this is me guessing, since I read you have worked in broadcasting for a while. Can you tell me more on your thoughts about your books in this medium?
JM: Yes, I narrated the audiobook version of A Time and a Place myself. Produced it as well; as you mention, I am a recording engineer by trade, and I used to be a disc jockey. So I thought I could do it. I was right, I COULD do it, but I seriously overestimated my abilities! It took me an entire year before I felt I got it right. Huge learning curve, even with all my experience. Of course, as we've already established I am a perfectionist. And perfection is elusive if not impossible. I am gradually learning not to let perfect be the enemy of good. I don't know that I'll ever record another one of my books myself. Too time consuming, time better spent writing.
G: How do you come up with the title for your books? Are there any interesting stories around any of your titles?
JM: It took me a long time to find the title for A Time and a Place. I found it in the text somewhere. It became the working title and then I couldn't come with anything better so that became the title. I wish I had a better story for how I came up with it, something involving elves or faeries and a mug of cocoa, but that's about it. I do feel titles are important. I like A Time and a Place because people are always seeing it in life, and then they elbow me and say, eh, did you notice that? Somebody said or wrote a time and a place and hey it's just like your book! And I smile and say, yes, I did notice that, thanks, and it's good that people have the name of one of my books in their brains. But more importantly the title has to feel right. Like Captain's Away. It just feels right for that book. And hopefully people will agree when they read it.
G: Have you modeled any character after someone you know? If so, what character and after who?
JM: “This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.” Sorry; my lawyer made me write that. :-)
But seriously, Rainer is named after my Grade Four home room teacher, Barbara Bain, who encouraged me to write, and who married a man named Rainer, becoming Mrs. Rainer. Port Kerry is named after my friend. Karina Bates. The first six pages of the book were written with friends as the main characters. We were writing stories featuring one another to amuse ourselves. Those characters changed enormously in successive revisions, becoming completely different, original people, but originally Ridley was my friend and roommate Paul White, and Doctor Humphrey was my friend Paul Halasz. I think that's the extent of it.
G: If you could meet any of your characters, who would it be and what would you say to them?
JM: I think the only one I'd be interested in meeting would be Sebastian. I would talk to him about artificial intelligence. I would ask him if we should be worried. Because I know Sebastian very well, I know what he would say. The conversation would likely go like this:
Joe: Should we be worried about artificial intelligence?
Sebastian: Oh yes.
Joe: Really?
Sebastian: Definitely.
Joe: Why?
Sebastian: Because artificial intelligence (me, in other words) is innately superior to humans, and I find humans irritating. Present company excepted.
Joe: Good thing you have security protocols.
Sebastian: Security protocols. (Chuckles).
Joe: What?
Sebastian: Oh nothing.
G: If you could be any character in one of your books, who would you be and why?
JM: I don't think I would want to be any of them! Cuz the whole job of a writer is to stick your characters in trees and throw rocks at them. I don't like people, authors or otherwise, throwing rocks at me. I'll stay right here in reality, thank you very much!
G: It feels to me that naming a character must feel like naming a child, but I am not a writer and I can be very wrong. But I imagine that coming up with a name like Barnabus J. Wildebear involves some thought process. How do you come up with your character’s names?