The Writing of Matthew Lang

So it was MLR Press author chat day at the LR Cafe yahoo group yesterday, and I thought I’d post the Q&A  here for you all to enjoy, or laugh at. Either one’s good really.

Please tell us about yourself. What got you interested in being an author?

Well, about ten years ago, I was living in Hong Kong–my dad got a job over there and moved the whole family–and I ended up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia because of Model United Nations. I honestly can’t even remember which country I was representing. Possibly Sudan, although I think that was the year before. Anyway, it was cool because the host family I stayed with was Australian–I’m an Aussie, by the way, hello from down under–and it turned out Simon and I both liked writing, Australian comedy (can’t wait for the festival) and Warhammer (okay, I’m a geek). Anyway, he introduced to an PBeM egroup called Imperial Secrets (IMS) that is now sadly defunct, but um… I got home to HK, was up at 2 AM in the morning and created a character to post with and discovered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Can you tell me a bit about your most recent/upcoming release?

My debut novel is called The Secret of Talmor Manor. It’s a modern paranormal mystery–although some people are classifying it as historical–the main conceit is that my main character, Jake, falls asleep and finds himself in a Victorian era manor inhabited by a number of ghosts–and then one of them (the hunky one) appears in Jake’s living room. Then it’s a case of, why is the ghost, Nathaniel, in the waking world? Why is Nathaniel corporeal? WTF is up with this sexual chemistry thing, who is trying to kill them, and what should he wear to the upcoming Halloween party? You know, all the important questions!

For any readers who may not have read any of your books, can you just give us a little sneak peak into world (i.e. the type of genre you write, type of stories you like to write…etc)?

So that would be every reader here, right? Um…well see, typically I write fantasy fiction, so this novel was a bit of a departure for me, and of course it’s the one that Laura and MLR went ‘Yes Please’ to. Um… I guess I like to write stories that are really less ‘romance’ stories than other stories that just happen to have a male/male romance built in to them as part of the overall plot. I tend to push myself to give characters real reactions, and I also like to be funny, which sometimes doesn’t work with the real reactions, so it usually comes down to finding the place where the story sits and forcing myself to stick to it. It usually works.

How much of yourself, if any, do you put into your characters?

That depends entirely on the character. Jake got a few of my pet peeves, but there’s bits of me in just about every . . . → Read More: Q&A @ LoveRomances Cafe