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Scroll down for a great interview with Mike Mason!

An Interview with Mike Mason

Where did you get your inspiration for The Blue Umbrella?

I live at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill, a couple of blocks down, is the real Porter’s Store. A few years ago I awoke in the middle of the night to a flash of insight. I recalled that when I was a little boy, many years ago and many miles away, I also lived at the top of a hill and at the bottom was an old store.  How interesting! With this strange convergence of my present and past lives, the whole geography of a children’s fantasy novel flowed into my mind. I could set the story right in my own neighborhood! But it would really be the neighborhood of my childhood, which is the deepest source of all writerly inspiration.

There was also a third old store, Foster’s, which I knew as a young man living in a small prairie town. Old Mr. Foster was always talking about the weather and he even made up little poems about it. In winter he might say:

Snow, snow, the lovely snow,

You step on a bit and down you go.

Or on a rainy day he’d say:

Sun, sun, the beautiful sun,

It never shines, the son-of-a-gun!

Listening to Mr. Foster recite his silly poems, one day my imagination got to wondering what might really be going on in that store …

Which character is most like you?

There is quite a bit of me in Zac Sparks—in two ways. Firstly, as a little boy I was very active and excitable and I got into a fair amount of trouble. I used to climb on top of the piano and shout, “Jump, Mommy, jump!” and from wherever she was in the house my mother would have to come running to catch me. And I once pushed the neighborhood bully off a high stone wall into a big tub of water! I picture Zac, under normal circumstances, as being like that.  

This story, however, does not take place under normal circumstances. Zac’s mother has died and he’s been plunged into a dark situation, so for most of the book he struggles with grief, shock, fear, and confusion. This changes him.  While he still has “sparks” of mischief and excitability, on the whole his behavior is much subdued, his natural character repressed. Interestingly I think this side of him reflects, to some extent, my adult self. Life has a lot of hard experiences that can knock you sideways. At some level aren’t adults trying to get back to the fully alive children they once were?

So yes, I identify with Zac. But to say which character is most like me, I have to admit it’s Ches. I like Ches a lot—so much that I decided to write book two in the series from Ches’s point of view. Talk about repressed! Due to his background he has so many problems. But precisely because of that, he has a great journey to make from darkness to light.

Who is your favorite character?

Chelsea! I love her because she is the one who has most retained her childlikeness. Through her connection with Eldy, she has resisted all pressure to conform to the evil that has Five Corners in its grip. Book three in the series will be from Chelsea’s point of view and I can hardly wait to write it!

This story seems to be an allegory. Did you start out intending to write an allegory or did it just happen?

For years I’d written nonfiction books with a message, and I was tired of that. I had nothing more to tell anyone; instead I just wanted to tell a good story. I had just turned fifty and I realized that fiction is what I’d really wanted to write all along.  Somehow I’d gotten away from that, and it was time to return to my original dream.

So with The Blue Umbrella I set out with no message in mind, no allegory, just a story.  As I went along, I myself was very surprised at the spiritual depth that developed. But I don’t think this makes my book an allegory, so much as a work of literature with an allegorical dimension. An allegory tends to feel wooden because there is a clear one-to-one correspondence between all the elements of the story and some other reality. An allegory is so linked to what it represents that it cannot really stand on its own, whereas a good literary story, while it always points beyond itself, is fully alive in its own right.

Did you know how The Blue Umbrella would turn out? Were you surprised by any of the plot twists or characters?

At the outset I had a vague idea of the ending, which turned out to be completely different! Other than that, all I had were a few key scenes, places I wanted to get to.  And I emphasize the word places. Books begin in different ways—sometimes with a character, sometimes with a bit of plot or setting.  The Blue Umbrella is very much a novel of setting. From the beginning what was most vivid in my mind was the place: Porter’s General Store at the five corners. Especially vivid was the all-important second story of Porter’s. I’ve never actually been there (in the real store, I mean), but I did have a chance to visit the upper story of another old building down the street, while it was being renovated. This was a former service station that was being turned into, of all things, a chocolate factory! When the owner took me upstairs, I saw this huge room that looked like a dance hall, with a beautiful hardwood floor and no pillars, illuminated in the most extraordinary way by late-afternoon light. The building had one-hundred-foot beams, which meant (obviously) they were cut from trees at least a hundred feet tall. You don’t see that anymore. My visit to that upper room was the inspiration for the Weatherworks.

Because I began my book with a setting, and not much else, the plot and characters came as a complete surprise as I wrote. I kept trying to make an outline but this didn’t seem to work for me. In fact I discovered that I didn’t really know how to tell a story, how to keep a plot moving over the long haul of a novel. Finding myself in the midst of a very steep learning curve, eventually I took a course that turned out to be exactly what I needed. The course was called Story, taught by Robert McKee—really a screenwriting course but wonderful for novelists, too. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (McKee also has a book by the same title.)

What is your favorite type of weather and why?

I love thunder and lightning and wind. It goes back to my childhood when (just like Zac) I used to stay up with my mother late at night to watch storms. As it happens, the place where I live now (on the West Coast) doesn’t have much electrical activity, but we do get a lot of rain. There’s nothing I like better than an all-day rain. It’s great writing weather! When the sun shines, it feels like a person should be outside enjoying it. But I’d rather have a good excuse to stay indoors and read and write.

When did you decide to be a writer?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eleven years old. In grade 7 I had a great teacher who taught a form of creative writing that she called Intensive Writing. It was really a sneaky way of getting us to write poetry. From the moment I discovered that I could simply look at something (such as a spider spinning a web; I think that was my first topic) and write about it—and not just about it but my feelings about it—from that point I never looked back. I grew up in a family where deep feelings were repressed, never talked about, and so the idea that I could explore my feelings in writing was revolutionary to me. It seemed totally radical, and still does. Writing is a way of bringing one’s inner life out into the open, and so bridging the two, and this is the most world-changing act a person can do. We all have these secret lives that we ourselves, often, are hardly aware of. To transform secrets into words and share them with others is truth.

In my pursuit of writing as a career, I made many mistakes. I’ve made even more in living my life. But somehow one thing I got right, both in writing and in life, was that, if I was going to be a writer, it meant not focusing on anything else. It meant not having any other career. It meant believing firmly enough in my artistic vision that, as long as I followed it faithfully, everything would work out. And it has. During my twenties I did a lot of odd jobs to support my writing—everything from library work to farming to garbage collecting. But for the last twenty-five years I’ve done nothing but write full time. And I love it!

Are you a disciplined writer or do you just write when you feel like it?

Yes! I write every day, five days a week, and usually I feel like it. I wake up in the morning thinking, “Oh boy, I get to write today!”

Having said that, I normally don’t start until about 3:00 p.m., and then I write for three or four hours. Any longer and I soon get burned out. I start late in the day because, if I started any earlier, I would just keep going and become a workaholic. That’s how much I love writing. So for me, the only way to have a life is to have it during the first part of the day. I also need time for planning, thinking, reading, handling the business end of writing, and just staring out the window or listening to music. Writing requires a lot of “nothing” time for mulling and daydreaming. Without that, creativity doesn’t happen.

If I occasionally come to my writing desk and don’t feel like writing, I just do it anyway, like being on a hike and putting one foot in front of another even if I’m worn out. It’s like priming a pump: Pour in a few words, crank the handle a few times, and soon the stream is flowing. If I don’t know where to start, I start where I want to. I try to identify one phrase or sentence or image that I find really intriguing, even if it’s just a fragment and doesn’t seem to be what I should be doing.  Writing is fundamentally about writing what I want, not what I should. Otherwise it stops being fun.

What is your favorite novel?

My favorite books these days are children’s books. I began reading them ten years ago, in preparation for writing my own, and it was a great revelation to read these stories as an adult.  Children’s literature allows an author to be idealistic in a way that modern adult literature does not. There are happy endings, heroic characters, a clear battle between good and evil, and portals leading to other worlds—all things that reflect, I believe, the deepest truths of life.

I love The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and some other classics. But right now I believe we’re in a new golden age of children’s literature, and I’m very excited about some books that have appeared more recently. For example, there’s Harry Potter (of course!), Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn series, and many others.

My favorite novel of all time is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—full of page after page of pure, gorgeous, totally absorbing storytelling. Stevenson’s Treasure Island is like that too; you get so deeply lost in the story you don’t even notice you’re turning pages. Another of my favorites is Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea—partly because I recall so vividly reading it as a boy, probably right around the time I began thinking of being a writer. I have a photograph of myself reading this book, which I think was the one that first opened my eyes to the imaginative possibilities of other worlds.  

What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?

Weather: how it looks and feels, and how it suggests something much more than meets the eye. I want readers to remember Zac in his room at the Aunties’ house, listening to the wind as it moves tree branches against his windowpane like someone tapping to be let in.

Have you ever wondered why weather is the number one topic of conversation? It seems like the smallest sort of small talk, but I think weather is really a very BIG topic. This is obvious in our own time, when the world is heading for climate disaster and everyone’s talking about it. But even just normal chitchat about weather is, I believe, far more significant than it appears. I think it’s a safe way for people to acknowledge something very important. We all have a deep yearning to discuss the big questions in life (such as “Why are we here?” and “What’s it all about?”), but often we cannot talk freely because there are so many different beliefs and it just gets really awkward.  Weather, however, is something right in our faces that both deeply affects us and that we can all agree on. It’s perfectly obvious if it’s raining or snowing or the sun is shining, and it’s also perfectly obvious that such magnificent phenomena reflect a greater reality. Weather is the ultimate metaphor.

This week we're featuring The Last Word, by Kathy Herman.  

Fill out the form on the right for a chance to win a free copy!  

All entries must be received by Sunday, November 1.

Scroll down for a note from Kathy Herman, and discussion questions.  

Have a great week!

A Note From the Author, Kathy Herman

I am not ashamed of the gospel,

because it is the power of God for the

salvation of everyone who believes:

first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

Romans 1:16

Are we, the body of believers, ashamed of the gospel? Why are we so easily intimidated into silence—into letting those whose hearts are blinded by unredeemed sin remake our holidays, determine what is politically correct, and remove any mention of God from our schools, our government buildings, and our national treasures?

Perhaps we lack the passion to safeguard what is sacred because we’ve lost the courage to share our faith in our daily lives. Do we believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him—that without Him, and Him alone, unbelievers are doomed to hell? Are we deeply concerned for their eternal welfare?

I confess to you that this was a difficult book to write. I did not start out writing a story that made a bold statement about the choice we all have to spend eternity with God or without Him. But my characters fought me the whole way and forced my hand to proclaim the truth, even at the risk of sounding preachy.

As I’m writing this afterword, the war against Christmas is raging all over America. How dare we “offend” the godless by holding to a blessed tradition that pays homage to the Word made flesh who gave His life so that we don’t have to live in darkness. These well-meaning individuals believe they can find peace on earth without turning to Him who is our peace. It can never happen. The only light in this dark world was lit in Bethlehem two thousand years ago and continues to burn today in the hearts of believers. He is both the Giver and the Gift, our only hope.

Most of us will never have a divine appointment like Brill’s, when our faith will be tested to the death. But almost every believer will face situations when, like Vanessa, we must choose to stand firm on that which cannot be compromised, even if it costs us dearly.

I have a feeling most of us don’t have to look past our own family, friends, and coworkers to find people who need to hear the message of the cross. Have you lamented that if these should die without a saving knowledge of Jesus, they would be doomed to a fate far worse than death? Perhaps you’ve tried to broach the subject but have been rebuffed?

Are you bold enough to try again? Or to give this book to them because you care more about their eternal future than the possibility they’ll figure out why you gave it to them? When we stand before God and give an account of our lives, it won’t matter if our efforts to share the gospel were met with jeering and rejection. What will matter is that we were obedient to the Great Commission.

Isaiah 55:11 promises that the Word of God never returns empty and that it will accomplish His purpose. Brill certainly experienced that, and so did Vanessa. Only the Holy Spirit can bring a person to the place of repentance and faith. Our job as believers is to tell the good news, and I loved being able to weave it into this story. If it touched you, please pass it on to someone you care about.

And if you read this story and would like to know more about how to become a Christian and begin a personal relationship with God, feel free to contact me through my guestbook page on my Web site (listed below).

I can hardly believe we’ve finished book two. Join me in the final book of the trilogy, The Right Call, where we go back to Sophie Trace and see how the Jessups are doing—and what Vanessa decided to name the baby. And whether Ethan’s friendship with Vanessa turns into something more. But don’t get too comfortable. Mystery and suspense abound!

I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop by my Web site at www.KathyHerman.com and leave your comments on my guest book. Or look me up on Facebook. I read and respond to every email and greatly value your input.

In Him,

Kathy Herman

Discussion Questions for "The Last Word"

1. In Romans 1:16, the apostle Paul makes a bold declaration: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” What do you think it means to be ashamed of the gospel?

2. Is there ever a legitimate reason not to share the gospel? Can you give examples of what might be a legitimate reason and what would be an excuse?

3. Can you think of times you’ve been bold about sharing your faith and times when you’ve been reluctant—or even ashamed? Can you explain what motivated you either way?  Do you think God wants us to share our faith, even if we haven’t been called to the “mission field” as it’s generally understood? What might be a broader definition of mission field?

4. First Corinthians 1:18 tells us, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” What do you think this means? Do the words make you feel more inclined or less inclined to share your faith with an unbeliever? And why?

5. Do you know people who see the salvation message as foolishness? Have you ever tried to explain to an unbeliever what the Christian life is all about, only to be ridiculed?  Patronized? Made to feel defensive?

6. Have you ever tried to hold an unbeliever to the same moral standard as yours? Should you? Who or what brings a person to a saving knowledge of Christ? Without the mind of Christ, can that person even understand he or she is lost?

7. If you found yourself in Brill’s circumstances, dialoguing with your attacker, do you think you would have the courage to share your faith? Do you think Brill’s firm belief that when she died she would be with the Lord gave her strength?

8. Why do you think Brill’s persistence in the face of death made an impression on Merrick Fountain—was it just what she said about God, or was it more than that?

9. Do you agree with Brill’s assertion that everything happens for a reason—even the really difficult things? If so, can you give a Scripture that supports it? Have you ever seen evidence of this in your own life? Could you believe God would use it for good even without seeing evidence?

10. Romans 8:28 makes a strong statement of faith: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” How did God use Brill’s dire circumstances for good in this story? If she had been murdered, would that have negated the truth of Romans 8:28? Is it possible that a believer’s suffering, even at the hands of a killer, might serve God’s higher purpose? Is that hard for you to accept? Be honest.

11. Vanessa’s sinful choices resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, and her choice not to abort the baby resulted in a severed relationship. Both choices, one wrong and one right, initially brought her sorrow. What was it that motivated her to make the right choice and not abort the baby? Do you believe she could have been happy for long if she had gotten an abortion? Or if Ty had changed his mind about breaking up with her?

12. Do you think God can use even our mistakes for His higher purpose? How did He use Vanessa’s good and bad choices to bring Ty to the place of realizing he needed God?

13. Which do you think is the better teacher: blessing or suffering? Does God use both? Which has made a bigger impact in your life?

14. Which do you think is more important if we are to be ambassadors of the gospel—what we say or what we do?  Or can the two be separated? Which do you think is more likely to offend an unbeliever—our sin? Our hypocrisy?  Our apathy?

15. If you could meet one of the characters in this story, which one would it be? What would you talk about? What did you take away from this story?

Hello fiction fans! We're taking a brief break from featuring books. If you'd like to fill out the form on the right with your name and email address, we'll be sure to email you when we're running another contest. Otherwise, we will be back the week of October 26th. Thanks for supporting fiction from David C. Cook!

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