As Martinus
Publishing has some new authors, I'll be conducting some interviews to help
promote their anthologies/works. Today,
I'm interviewing Jason Sharp, an exceptional author who contributed the short
story The Shining Path to “AlteredAmerica.” Thank you for taking the time
to be interviewed, Jason.
JASON SHARP: I’m delighted to have the opportunity!
MTI: Starting off, could you tell our readers a
little bit about yourself?
JS: I’m married to a lovely,
lively woman named Valerie. We’ve got a
hobby farm outside Ottawa, where we raise a variety of livestock and tend to a
large garden. Five days a week, I tear
myself away and make the long drive into the city to work as a policy analyst
for the Government of Canada.
MTI: Now, getting down to business; what first
compelled you to weave fiction, and what's your favorite type of story to
write?
JS: The creative spark’s always been there. I started writing and drawing eight-page
“graphic novels” (I use the term quite loosely) about misbehaving house cats
when I was six years old, then spent my high school years writing sci-fi and
faux-romance on our shiny new Apple IIE computer.
A decade back, the latest
creative period started as I got into a couple of online geopolitical sims and
wrote some fictional pieces in support of it.
Valerie read some of it, thought it was pretty good, and suggested that
I consider writing wholly original fiction for publication purposes. I wasn’t really sure I was up to that, but she
gave me a lot of encouragement, support, and the occasional kick to the
posterior. I took the plunge five years
ago and sold my first story—Lonesome
Charlie Johnstone’s Strange Boon—in 2012.
I tend to lean towards science
fiction, with a fair bit of “weird stuff happens in the real world”
scenarios. I’ve also done a fair bit of
alternate history and dabbled a bit in horror, fantasy, and poetry.
MTI: Tell me, if you had to pick just one author
who has influenced or inspired you, who would it be?
JS: Arthur C. Clarke’s classics
were my gateway into science fiction.
They were entertaining reads that nicely balanced storytelling with big
ideas such as the evolution of life. They’ve
aged well, too, if one sets aside issues like colonies on Venus; I was often
surprised to find some of the books were (at that point) twenty or thirty years
old.
2010 happened to
be the first time I encountered the difference between a book and its movie
adaptation—which was unfortunate since my favorite part of the book was the
loss of the Chinese mission to Europa.
The complete absence of China from the movie was perplexing and
irritating, and my young self couldn’t predict that somebody would go make Europa Report a mere thirty years later.
MTI: Your story, The Shining Path, appears in Altered America, an anthology of
alternate histories. The fictional
accounts in this collection let us imagine what it would be like if something
had happened differently at different points in history. Tell us a little about how your story changes
history.
JS: The point of departure here is only briefly
alluded to—a Hungarian-Canadian activist named Geza Matrai doesn’t jump Soviet Premier Kosygin while he and Prime Minister
Trudeau are taking a walk in Ottawa.
Without that impetus for improved VIP security in Canada, Arthur Bremer does assassinate Richard Nixon during
his 1972 visit to Canada.
Consequently, George Wallace—whose
own shooting by Bremer has been butterflied away—wins the 1972 presidential
election. Wallace isn’t too happy with
Canada’s treatment of Bremer, and isn’t fond of Trudeau’s policies, so pretty
soon he’s sent the army into Canada.
MTI: If you could go back in time and try to
change any one historical event (aside from killing Hitler/stopping WWII—almost
everybody tries that), which would you choose?
JS: Changing the big events is a risky
proposition since the outcomes can vary so wildly. Killing Hitler could lead to a golden era of
peace, stability, and group hugs. It could also encourage Stalin to conquer
Europe at a time when nobody’s effectively able to resist, leading to a
continent-wide Holodomor worse than WWII.
I’d be pretty reluctant to interfere too much without some sort of
insurance policy—like, say, the ability to go back in time and talk myself out
of whacking Hitler.
So I think I’d keep my focus on
smaller, discrete events that have no obvious up-side as they are now. Murders, accidents, things like that.
MTI: Conversely, name a historical event that you
would never want to see changed/would go back in time to stop somebody from
changing it.
JS: The Bre-X mining scam of the late 1990s cost
a lot of investors a lot of money, and it pretty much blew up the Canadian
mining sector for a few years.
I was just finishing university
and looking for work in that sector, though.
As a result of the scam, industry jobs in the big cities dried up and I
ended up working for the government in the north—and had the experiences I had,
met the friends I did, married the woman I did—as a result. Remove the scam and the whole trajectory of
my life changes from something I’m pretty happy with.
I’d have to have words with some
time-traveling disgruntled investor looking to undo that. Maybe point out that he should be investing
in Apple, Google, and all those guys instead.
MTI: Shifting back to your writing, can you tell
us a little about what you're working on right now?
JS: I got to thinking one day about the vampire
hunter genre: The hunters corner a
vampire at night in some remote field, shoot/stake/burn it, crack a beer and
utter some manly talk, then vamoose before the cops show up. Roll credits and fade to black, right?
But suppose one of the many, many bullets fired by the vampire
hunters over-penetrates the vampire, goes through a nearby barn, and lodges
itself in a sheep? An unsuspecting
farmer named Dwayne might get up the next day and find himself dealing with a
confused, blood-thirsty, and undead sheep in Toasting Melba.
MTI: Other than The Shining Path appearing in Altered America, do you have any
other stories being published in the near future?
JS: Live at Gus’s Place should
be appearing in Song Story Press’ “Song Stories Volume 2” in the next month or
two. As the title suggests, the story is inspired
by music—in my case, Bill Joel’s Piano
Man and Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Estranged, although
a line from the movie The Incredibles was
also significant. In this case, a young
woman is playing piano for bar patrons who happen to be washed-up superheroes
and supervillains.
I’ve also got a flash-fiction
piece called Dead Air scheduled to
appear in Apokrupha’s “Vignettes from the End of the World”. In this case, the narrator’s morning commute
is disrupted when everybody else on Earth disappears.
MTI: On a lighter
note, have you watched any good television lately?
JS: To tell the honest truth—I haven’t
watched television since Canadian broadcasters stopped transmitting analogue
signals a couple of years back. Life’s
busy enough that when I do get free time, I don’t want to spend it passively
watching a screen. I’m more likely to
read or write.
MTI: What sort of music do you enjoy?
JS: I like a fair range of rock music, ranging
from indie-rock like Matt Mays & El Torpedo to shock-rock from Alice Cooper
and Rob Zombie.
Valerie and our friends have
exposed me to a lot of folk and country in recent years, so I’ve come to
appreciate some of that too. Performers
in those genres are more likely to tell a story in their lyrics, which is a
refreshing change from the party/women/pick-up truck fixations of modern
mainstream music.
MTI: What are three of your favorite movies?
JS: I enjoy Dark
City’s moody design and trippy story.
Highlander has the historical
elements, sword-fight set-pieces, and a highly entertaining villain.
And there’s an Australian gem
called Undead that I think is one of
the most entertaining and original zombie flicks around. It also greatly amuses me that one of the
heroes is a creepy farmer with a straw hat, denim overalls, and dual handguns
MTI: You have the attention of potential readers. In conclusion, do you happen to have any
words of wisdom to share with them?
JS: Never under-estimate the
power of one person to help another achieve success. If you’re in the position where you can help
somebody else, make the effort to do so.
If you’re in the position to receive such help, don’t be too fearful or
proud to accept it.
MTI: Excellent
advice! I am hopeful that Martinus
Publishing can be that help for more writers in the coming years, just as
fellow writers can be that help for Martinus Publishing. Thank you for that fantastic interview,
Jason. Those who wish to read his story
and many other alternate history gems can pick up Altered America!
