Featured Official Interview: William E. Mason

[kandscreeley]

Today's Chat with Sarah features William E. Mason author of Chloe the Clone, an upcoming book of the month.

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1. What do you do when you aren't writing?

I'm a retired architect. When I was actively writing, I would take time off to work on my house, tend the treed five acres it sits on, hike Colorado fifteeners, play tennis, play my guitar.

2. What does your writing process look like?

I work with writing software that guides me in mapping out the manuscript and asking questions about chapters and scenes that, when answered, clarify where I am going. Once the outline is complete, it's a matter of sitting down consistently and telling my story in detail. As an added complement, I was a member of a critique group that met regularly and reviewed products. That feedback was considered and usually woven into the narrative.

3. Let's discuss your book Chloe the Clone. How would you describe the book?

Chloe The Clone is a suspense set in the year 2020. Part Romancing The Stone (romantic, comedic, with inept bad guys), part Paper Moon (feel good, sentimental, and quirky), Chloe The Clone nevertheless poses a serious story question: What does a man do when he comes to love the child who was cloned to give him a new heart?

4. What was the hardest part of the book to write? What was the most rewarding?

As stated above, once a detailed outline was formalized, then writing was easier, not harder.

5. There are a lot of stories focused on cloning. How did you make your story different?

On the morality of growing a clone for a transplant, I state that clones used for this purpose are brain-dead. My story focuses on what happens if a clone is sentient and develops a relationship with its originator.

6. How far away do you think human cloning is?

Humans can be cloned now. It's just that it's illegal.

7. The book discusses heavy themes like morality and cloning. Was there a message that you wanted to convey to your readers?

As stated above, I touch on the morality of cloning. It's a perplexing question since a brain-dead clone can be thought of as just tissue to be used for its organs. That would conflate with the current debate about abortion. Is the fetus just mindless tissue, or does it have a greater potential?

8. What's next for you? Do you have any books in the works?

After writing Chloe the Clone which very much paralleled me and my then ten-year-old granddaughter, I was diagnosed at age 73 with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood cancer that Carl Sagan died from. The only known cure is a stem cell transplant. When diagnosed, I was given ten months to live without treatment. Treatment was commenced and worked for two years before failing. I entered a clinical drug trial that put the disease into remission. Then I was given a stem cell transplant. I am now six years clear and still alive. Be that as it may, during that time I was drawn to fundamental questions of life. Nothing like impending death to focus the mind. I undertook to write a non-fiction manuscript that I have titled: Primordial Speculations: On The Universe, Consciousness, Life and Death. Currently, it is unpublished.

I like to end with fun questions.

9. What's your favorite science fiction franchise?

Star Wars.

10. Laying aside morality, if you had the opportunity to live forever, would you?

In my non-fiction work mentioned above, I express the thought of an all-encompassing timeless entity that I call the Plethorum that nothing is ever lost since there is nowhere else for it to go.

Having been an agnostic most of my life, I had always felt a sense of vertigo when stepping back from rational known to unknowns, arriving ultimately at the question of what is beyond infinity. We can formulate theories about the here and now that work quite well. But then, when we step back we ask why, where is that, what lies beyond? Even the simplest answer of God did not satisfy me as where is God in all of this?

I posit what I call the Plethorum for lack of another word or words that come historically with a lot of baggage. The entity, the Plethorum, encompasses everything. If you want to talk about infinities, it's in the Plethorum. If you want to talk about multiple dimensions, it's in the Plethorum, multiple universes, no problem. You want to pray to the Plethorum, be my guest although one might say it would be like talking to yourself. The Plethorum is an all-inclusive context that includes us and everything around us that exists in a timeless totality.

This at first sounds very much like pantheism. But my takeaway is that although the Plethorum roughly fits pantheism, the devil is in the details (unfortunate expression).

11. How do you destress?

I don't think I stress. As a professional architect, I was trained to identify problems, and once identified to ponder a solution or solutions. These solutions would either fall into something I could do and control, or were outside of my purview. If outside, then matters would proceed without my input and subsequently lead to a redefinition of the problem that I could address anew.

12. What's one item you must have while writing (favorite pen, certain snack, etc.)?

Solitude. Please don't interrupt me. I am writing what is a description of the movie reel running in my mind.

[aghimir2]

Favorite Pen

[walton 1]

I appreciate yuohh

[Lelona Maqutyana]

This book is a magic for destress

[Christopher Mundi]

I really love the fact that you guys are absolutely accurate

[Patience Reign]

It's nice to know what you are doing when not writing.I have always been fascinated by architects .Just drawing some diagrams on paper and seeing them brought to life , is just cool. I hope you shall continue writing great stories