Those of you who have visited my website a few times will know that while I have a blog page, I’ve posted to it only occasionally. That is about to change. From now on I plan to post a new blog once a week. To explain why, I begin with a piece called “Death of a Luddite.”
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Here’s a live reading of The Three Fools by Mike Mason, as performed by Ron Reed of Pacific Theatre, Vancouver, at their annual Christmas Presence show. This is one of the pieces in Mike’s new book Twenty-one Candles: Stories for Christmas. Available from Alphabet Imprints and other booksellers.
I’ve finally joined the rest of the world and launched a Facebook page. Should you feel so inclined (and you should!) please like my page and invite your friends to like me. When I reach 1000 likes, my publisher has promised to buy each one of you a virtual ice cream cone.
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I’m leafing through a file of old Christmas stories with a view to gathering them into a collection. For three decades I’ve written a new Christmas story every year to give out to friends as a greeting card. A tradition that pre-dates the internet, it’s been one way to get instantly published. We also host an annual party on Christmas Adam (if you’re not familiar with that term, read “Yabba-ka-doodles!”) at which I read my latest story aloud. So I’ve not only had my own publishing house but a radio station as well.
[Note: Thanks for this story to Dr. Jim Foulkes, who served as a missionary doctor in Africa for four decades. This is my version of a story he told me, but you can read Dr. Jim’s own account in his wonderful book To Africa With Love: A Bush Doc’s Story. Furthermore, Dr. Jim is presently at work on a collection of 28 of his hunting tales. I can hardly wait!]
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Many are aware that St. Francis preached to the birds, and St. Anthony to a congregation of fish. But let’s remember that before these saints ever preached to the animals, the animals first preached to them.
On February 3, 2012, I celebrated my 60th birthday. The day itself I spent quietly, but the next day I had a party. My friend Andrew Case, accompanied by Kristina Hutchison, played a living room concert, so the evening was filled with music, good friends, and a fabulous chocolate cake courtesy of Karen.
Often excerpts from my book The Mystery of Marriage are read at weddings. Recently my friend Ron Reed was asked to do this, and for the occasion he organized my prose into lines of poetry. The result is quite nice:
It’s here! At long last! A book I wrote fifteen years ago has finally hit the press.
Well, not exactly the press. Fact is, I’ve just launched my first self-published ebook. Having sent my manuscript to some 30 publishers over the years, I finally decided that this thing needs to see the light of day.
Great reviews are starting to trickle in for my new novel The Violet Flash!
From Carrie Padgett of Author’s Choice: “Mike Mason’s story will take its proper place next to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and other speculative fiction that points the reader to God and expounds on the nature of good, evil, creation, and redemption.”
“Well, here we are at Porter’s, the store that has inspired two famous novels!”
So began my talk at the launch party for my new fantasy novel The Violet Flash, sequel to The Blue Umbrella. For all of you who couldn’t be there, here’s a link to a VIDEO of the event. It’s 34″ long, so at any point feel free to fast forward to the Q&A session at 20:42, which went pretty well, I think. Many thanks to Arthur Doerksen for producing the video, and to Ron Koyanagi for providing the music.