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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET MARK LONDON WILLIAMS
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| Mark Williams |
I wrote all the time, without realizing I was a “writer.” I wrote short stories, comics with friends, and later, always signed up to work on the school paper, etc. (My parents met on the staff of their school paper, but I don’t know if that means it was genetic!)
When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?
That happened in high school – when suddenly it occurred to me I *was* a writer. It was kind of a “yikes!” moment. As in “that’s not an easy thing to be! Now what!?”
What audience did you have in mind for your career as a writer - adult or children?
I’ve written for both, and still do. The published fiction – i.e., the “Danger Boy” books (and several other projects currently being written and/or planned!) – are all for young readers on the march. But my journalism (I write a column for a Hollywood trade paper), and my plays (I was with a theater company in my 20’s, as the troupe writer), are all for older readers/viewers.
When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career? (or a career in illustrating? or just art in general?)
I was a theater major at U.C. Berkeley – I’d thought of coming to L.A. back then, to major in film, since film, in the 70’s, seemed like the place to be, if you were a storyteller (I mean, it was an era producing things like “Chinatown,” The “Godfather” films, “Nashville,” “Cuckoo’s Nest,” etc., etc., one after the other…) However, entanglements with a young lady kept me in Northern California as I was contemplating college, and I stayed in my native Berkeley, and wound up majoring in theater, thinking that being a good playwright could translate into being a good scriptwriter. It was there I started to delve into Shakespeare, etc., who I mention since the “Danger Boy” book I’m working on as of this writing, “Fortune’s Fool,” has our heroes traveling back to the era of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and the whole invention of commercial “show business” by the Elizabethans… So the new book is kind of bringing things full circle.
What was your first job when you graduated from college?
I worked in a bank, parttime, in San Francisco, for about a year, before moving down to Los Angeles. The bank keep downsizing and closing branches, and during “exit interviews” I kept saying I had no plans to stay a banker (though maybe I’d understand the “hedge fund” collapse better if I did?), and they kept retaining me, reassigning me to other branches (in the mail room). So I couldn’t collect unemployment and write for a few months, like I’d sorta planned!
How soon after that was your first book published?
I wrote a book in my 20’s, for grown-ups, that came within a whisker of getting published (at the last minute, the publishers changed their mind!) But my first commercial “credit” was a produced play in San Francisco, when I was around 23 or 24 – right after I’d moved to Los Angeles!
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?
When I was sending around the sample chapters for DANGER BOY in the late 90’s, it took about a year of rejection before my first publisher, Tricycle Press, picked up the series. I had already had several produced plays, and a long track record as a journalist by then, so at least had some “bona fides” as a writer. My current publisher, Candlewick, took over the series from Tricycle.
Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?
The Danger Boy books all take the formula used in “Ragtime” and many other books, blending real characters and real historical events with my made up ones.
Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?
The research can be fun – for the last book, I watched a bunch of Shakespeare plays on DVD, and each time, was able to tell myself I was “working!” Same thing when I was watching Lewis & Clark documentaries when writing the third book in the series!
Do you work on more than one book at a time?
Well, I’m always writing articles and columns for the paper during the several months I’m also working on a new book. Sometimes I squeeze more than one purely creative project in there, too…
What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?
A couple of post DANGER BOY projects for slightly older readers. One using the globally-warmed world-to-come as its setting…
What do you most want the students to get out of your school visits?
That their stories matter – indeed, that it’s vital they tell their stories, and listen to others, however they get that done.