Two Niagara-on-the-Lake authors are bringing their very different fictional worlds together for a joint book launch — and a conversation about how they turn ideas into stories.
Richard West and Paul Masson will be at the NOTL Public Library on Tuesday, Sept. 1, to celebrate the release of their latest novels and discuss what inspires their writing, how they build fictional worlds and how an idea becomes a finished book.
Masson’s “Sufficient Unto the Day” is the eighth novel in his mystery series “The ABC Files,” which follows the staff of a detective agency spread across North America as they tackle puzzling cases, sailing adventures and life-threatening danger.
West’s “Magic Trick” combines science-fiction with alternative history. The novel tells two intersecting stories: an astronomy student who discovers a strange phenomenon in the sky and an alien race called the YIST, which has evacuated the Moon and hopes to find refuge on Earth.
The two authors met about eight years ago through the NOTL Writers’ Circle. Both are members of the group, which gives beginner and experienced writers an opportunity to receive peer feedback and supportive critiques.
West joined in 2016, while Masson came aboard around 2018. Over the years, the two have read and commented on each other’s work.
“Richard was nice enough to read and give me comments — be a beta reader, as they call it — before I published this book,” Masson said of “Sufficient Unto the Day.”
“I’ve also read and commented on some of his things and I realized how different our genres are,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to actually have a conversation about how we do things — some things the same, some things differently.”
That conversation eventually grew into the idea for a joint book launch.
West describes one major difference between his writing process and Masson’s: Masson is a “planner,” while West is a “pantser” — a writer who flies by the seat of his pants.
“A planner figures out what his or her book’s about, maps it out and then merrily writes chapters, and they all fit together in the plan,” West said.
“I’m completely the opposite. I’ll write a short story, and then I’ll get nudged into thinking, ‘Well, perhaps I could write another sequel to that.’ And next thing you know, I’m writing chapters. I have no idea whatsoever where the book’s coming from.”
For West, a retired engineer, writing “Magic Trick” has been a long and winding journey. He first developed the idea in the 1990s, when he attempted to write a full-length story for the first time.
As he learned more about writing and publishing, he published three books and repeatedly returned to the original idea, expanding and refining it along the way. “Magic Trick,” his fourth book, brings that journey to an end.
“Sometimes, I’m absolutely amazed when I’m getting through a book that I never expected would go that far,” he said of his process. “As with a bunch of us [writers], we find the same thing. We suddenly find the book’s telling me what I’ve got to write, not me telling the book.”
Masson, a retired economist, came to fiction writing after years of writing about economics for academic journals, peer-reviewed periodicals and newspapers.
He said fiction engages a different part of himself — more personal than the “logical, impersonal, rational mind” he used in his previous work.
“I attribute things to my characters that are emotions, fears, opinions that may well be wrong. There’s more of myself in the fiction than in the non-fiction writing that I used to do,” he said.
The Sept. 1 conversation will be moderated by Eileen Campbell, another member of the NOTL Writers’ Circle.
The event runs from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. To register, visit notlpubliclibrary.org/events.
