One of the great things about an online world is the ability to know people who you’d never have a chance to meet. For example, this week’s Author Profile is Matthew Lang.  Prior to his agreeing to be my next victim . . .  guest I hadn’t met him. Matthew hails from the far side of the universe, otherwise known as Melbourne Australia.

Part of the reason I’m doing the Thursday Author Profiles was so I could meet some of the other authors who write m/m fiction.  Why? Well, it’s nice to get to know some of the people whose work I’ve read.

The Way You Are is Matthew’s latest book. It, like him, is set in Australia.  It’s an easy, enjoyable read.  Leon and Warrick are cute together and I get the sense from Matthew’s interview that he and Leon have the same sense of humor. He’ll be sure to correct me if I’m wrong. One of the things I liked about how the story was laid out is that he gives us footnotes for some of the unique Aussie words. If you know what they mean, you might be tempted to skip em, but don’t.  There is also a bit of a running commentary in the footnotes, so do be sure to check them all out as you read.

So with that, I’ll let Matthew take over.

 Author: Matthew Lang

1)    What influences you to write? Creative juices, family, ego [i.e. like to see your name in print]

Bad internet fiction. Well, only in part. I started writing because all the stories that I’d grown up on always had heroes who went on to fall in love with and marry someone of the opposite sex. It was as if every story was telling me that in order to be a hero, you had to get married. And be straight. I write now so that the stories I wish I could have read growing up are out there for people to find now.

Initially I spent a lot of time finding free internet fiction, but I always got frustrated when stories were badly written, or weren’t finished and eventually got to the point where I wanted to edit or rewrite them, which is an emotion I channeled into my own work.

2)    Where do you write? Home office? Coffee shop? Bedroom?

Anywhere. At home I write at my desk, or sometimes on the couch on my tablet. I’ll write on the tram with a pen and notebook. Every November you’ll find me at NaNoWriMo write ins in cafes, movie post production offices, libraries and other people’s houses. Basically, I write anywhere and everywhere I can. It’s like an addiction really. I can’t not write.

3)    What is your favorite genre – is it the same for reading as writing?

Fantasy, definitely, although I dabble in science fiction as well. I suppose there’s the emerging trend of just calling it ‘speculative fiction’ and going with that, not that you’d know it by my writing so far! I can’t remember who said it, but at the end of the day there’s good writing and there’s bad writing. The rest is just a way to organise the bookstore.

4)    What else do you like to read?

Hmm…no I think ‘good writing’ covers it all. If you’re talking other than prose, I do follow a few webcomics–primarily Order of the Stick and Girl Genius. I did like Boy Meets Hero as well. It’s on my ‘to buy’ list for the future.

5)    A favorite book not writing by you or me?

Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. It was the first Discworld book I read and it made me realise fiction could be riveting, funny and thought provoking all at the same time. Prior to that I’d found most fiction I’d read went for one of the three. Two if I was very lucky.

TheWayYouAre_NEWBACKGROUND2_cgriffin

6)    Tell us about you most recent or upcoming book?

My most recent release is called The Way You Are, and I like to think it’s a celebration of the straight people who support their GLBT brothers and sisters. I know I’ll probably get criticism because of it, but I don’t write conventional romance. I write about the experience of being gay, growing up gay, facing the reality of homophobia both overt and unconscious. I guess that’s one of the reasons I try to keep things light hearted and am occasionally sarcastic about things. Sometimes I find what I write about cuts a bit close to home for me. I guess you could call it a coping mechanism.

In any case The Way You Are follows Leon, a shy, young country boy who’s been rejected by his family and is making his own way through tertiary studies, and who befriends a straight guy who gets gay bashed for standing up for equality. Actually Leon starts visiting him in hospital and the other guy, Rook, is in a coma. Then Rook wakes up and thinks he’s gay and that he and Leon are dating. Except Leon is sort of dating another guy already at that time. Does that sound convoluted enough for you? Read the blurb. It’s better than what I just said. Really. Then read the book.

7)    What was the inspiration(s) for the Book(s)?

A few things. There was a story prompt I got given based around a straight guy who was assaulted–gay bashed–in the US for precisely the same thing I have Rook being attacked for. I also remember reading a story about an amateur rugby player who received a brain injury and literally woke up gay. He quit his job at the bank, broke up with his (female) fiance, took up hair dressing and is now married to a man. And it all seems pretty legitimate. It’s a fascinating story, and as far as I know one of the only–if not the only–documented case of this type. I just thought that would be incredibly fun to toy with, along with the supposition that every gay man’s fantasy is to have a straight guy fall in love with him.

8)    What is your favorite book that you’ve written and why?

This one, it’s the newest and everyone should read it. Actually it’s also the first of my books to be pirated, which is a bit of a strange thought. I don’t know if that means I’ve made it as an author, but it’s a milestone of sorts. I just wish I was making enough money that I could afford not to worry about pirated books, but I’m not living comfortably off my writing just yet. Give me a few years I suppose!

9)    What are you working on now?

Well, I was working on my Australia Day short, After the BBQ but that’s also just come out. Otherwise I’m working on what I consider my first proper fantasy novel, which I’m currently calling Prophecy. I’m attempting to work out what happens if you send a modern gay man on the traditional fantasy quest of kill dragon, rescue princess, marry princess and rule the kingdom, if I don’t change the gender of the princess, which seems to be the standard approach. The outcomes have been surprising and I can’t wait to share it with you all.

10) What frustrates you as a writer?

The part where I know I have a great story but it won’t spring fully formed from my brain to the page. Especially the part about a third to halfway in where you’re just encountering the first set of major plot holes that make you wonder what the heck you were thinking. I don’t know about everyone else, but it’s that point where the problems don’t seem solvable, inspiration has gone and it all looks too insurmountably difficult and you feel like you should quit and go do something easy–like astrophysics or quantum engineering.

11) Did getting your first book contract change your outlook on writing? If so how?

Oh completely. It changed writing from being something I thought I’d succeed at ‘some day’ to something I want to succeed at right now. It gave me the strength and conviction to follow my dreams now, rather than joining the corporate rat race, which I really didn’t like the look of in any case.

12) Have you ever self published anything?  If so how does it differ from having a publisher buy your work?

I sort of have, yes, but I only self publish short stories that have previously been published in Anthologies. I guess the main difference is that I’ve had to do the formatting and source the cover art myself. Thankfully I have a few arty friends, and the one I use refuses to let me pay him. The only payment I’ve got him to accept is homemade ice cream! Currently I have a few self pubbed shorts out– Mr. Perfect, my other footnoted story, Screens, which looks at how the screens in our life both facilitate and block communication, and Koan, which is the one story I have to point out that has no queer, erotic or romantic content at all inside of it, and instead is an attempt to explain the philosophy of Zen Buddhism.

13) Do you ever model characters after people you know? If so in what way? Looks? Personality? Life events?

No. I really try not to. I always worry that if I do it’ll be obvious if they read my work and then I’ll have to face questions as to why I hate them so much given the pain I can put my characters through. That said, there’s enough of me in every book that there’s probably little things that make their way into the works. The one and only time I’ve consciously based a character on a friend was for a musical and I asked permission first.

14) If you could meet any writer, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

The first one to write slashfic of my work and turn it into a fandom. That’s when I’d *know* I’ve made it.

15) What’s an ideal afternoon for you?

A temperature of about 27 degrees (that’s celcius), good friends and a picnic in the park with lots of homemade food. possibly a BBQ as well. After which I return home to find the writing I should have done has gone and written itself.

Well, you did say ‘ideal’.

16) Where would you most like to go for your next holiday?

America. I want to make it to GayRomLit sometime in the next few years, but I’m not allowing myself to do it until I have at least two novels in print. In all likelihood, my next holiday will probably be to Hong Kong. I have to go back in 2014 to retain my residency there. I lived there for a bit growing up–my dad got a job and packed the family off to Asia in 1994–and as a result I have permanent residency there.

17) If you could go back in time, what time period would you like to visit?

One of the ones with dinosaurs. I don’t know. I mean, despite the romanticism of travelling back into the past, I’m not sure I want to go back to a time before we had the medical advances we enjoy now, and most people didn’t have their own teeth or bathe regularly. There’s a reason I write fantasy and not historical.

Actually, no I’d like to go back to December 26th 2012. I know what the winning lottery numbers were for the draw on the 29th…

Matthew Lang writes behind a desk, in the park, on the tram and sometimes backstage at amateur theatre productions. He has been known to sing and dance in public, analyse the plots of movies and TV shows, and is a confessed Masterchef addict. Over the years he has dabbled in marketing, advertising, event management and the sale of light fittings, but his first love is and has always been that of the written word and is rarely too far from a good book. He likes his men hot and spunky, his mysteries fantastical, his fantasies real and his vampires to combust when exposed to sunlight. Other than that he’s pretty normal. One day we may even take him out of the straight jacket.

You can reach find him at: http://www.matthew-lang.com

On Twitter @mattlangwrites