Open Mic with Shane Joseph
Interview at Behind the Books
Monday, 8 February 2010, 6:14am
By Kathy-Diane Leveille
I'm introducing a new feature on BEHIND THE BOOKS this year called OPEN MIC. It's an interview with a twist. Rather than talk to the author of a newly released novel, I'll interview the protagonist to get the juicy inside story. My first guest is Samson Arthurs who was created by author, Shane Joseph, in his new book AFTER THE FLOOD.
Who is Samson Arthurs?
Samson is 27 years of age and unmarried when the flood occurs in 2012. He is a University of Toronto engineering grad. Samson is on the Board of Governors of his local United Church before the known world ends. He becomes the religious and political head of Tolemac, the newly constituted Humanitarian city state, after the flood. He marries Agnes, an Australian transplant, and they have a son, David, who narrates this story. In his youth, Samson played basketball and dated moderately. He is a teetotaller with a great faith in God and believes that he is one of the chosen ones, born to deliver mankind from the cataclysm.
1. Hi Samson and welcome to OPEN MIC on BEHIND THE BOOKS. When did you first appear on the page?
On page 1. I don’t believe in wasting time.
2. What's your biggest challenge?
Keeping the Capitalists across the water at bay, and also keeping my suppressed sex drive and emotions under control
3. If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?
Organized, Visionary and Self-Sacrificing
4. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Greed. I thought that the flood wiped out mankind’s sins, but desire, and its evil twin, greed, are still hard-wired into our genetic code. I know, because despite my great faith in God, I suffer from desire and greed too.
5. What's your #1 favourite pass time?
Working. There is so much post-flood reconstruction to be done that I don’t think it will ever end during my lifetime. And by reconstruction, I don’t only mean just fixing broken physical infrastructure, but also mending the hearts and souls of all of us who were damaged by the flood.
6a. What's your biggest weakness?
My loins.
6b. Greatest strength?
My faith in the Bible
7. How's your love life?
Pretty horrible. Agnes and I spiralled into a role-based relationship, where we were models of a solid marriage in public, but locked inside separate worlds in private. Then Delia came along and gave my love life a spark. But that “affair,” as they used to call it in the Old World, ended with horrible consequences for my family and for my beloved state of Tolemac.
8. If you won a million dollars, what's the first thing you'd do?
Build our prototype sniffer program into a full-fledged spying device to check if any of our citizens are into nefarious business dealings, like drug smuggling, or trading with the Capitalists
9. What's your favourite movie and why?
Camelot. I watch it all the time in this book. Part 1 of the movie, which ends with everyone living happily in this medieval utopian kingdom, despite the warning clouds on the horizon, helps me during my depressed periods – because it tells of a better time. I watch Part 2 during moments of complacency, because it warns me of what happens when we take life too easy. My beloved state Tolemac is Camelot read backwards, by the way.
10. Do you like your writer, creator? Is there something you wish they'd done differently?
I wish he had got this book published a lot faster. I sat for seven years within the pages of a manuscript while he worked on other projects and bided his time until my story became a hot topic. His excuse was that he was getting rejected by publishers because the material was not topical. Topical, my foot! If the denizens of Earth only know what’s coming their way shortly, they will be reading my story in every school in every country on this planet. I am just afraid that it is coming out too late. After all, 2012 is less than three years away.
11. What's a secret about your writer that no one knows, but you?
Oh, like me, he believes that he is a “chosen one”. He believes that he is the “holy trinity” of literature, the next Hemingway, Greene and Steinbeck rolled into one. If you permit me, I’d like to burst his bubble. In a post-2012 world, no one has the time, and in some cases, the opportunity, to read paper books. Everything will go via the Infoway (the Internet, as you call it today). My creator can write but he may not make any income from it. He will have to satisfy himself with the thought that he is communicating his thoughts with the world, just as I tried to do with my journal, which, by the way, is the foundation of After the Flood. If he really needs to earn a living, I could offer my creator a construction job in Tolemac, we always need help.
12. If you could control your creator, what kind of book, scenario, would you love to appear in?
I’d love to appear as King Arthur in Camelot. I think my creator intended that but he got things convoluted: he called me Samson Arthurs because he didn’t know whether I should be Samson the strong man or King Arthur. As a result, I represent both those historic figures. He also got Camelot inverted and called it Tolemac. Now he is seriously nurturing thoughts of writing a sequel and wants me to return, although everyone concluded from the opening chapter of After the Flood that I was dead.
13. What is your favourite scene in the novel you're currently in? Why?
My favourite scene is when I see the fires of retribution running wild around Tolemac during the storm of 2046. Talking about it puts me in a sticky situation though, as I might give the plot away. My creator will think that I am a spoiler and ban me from further interviews. Thanks for inviting me on this show – it’s been a long time since I have talked to people from the Old World.
Great talking to you Samson. Thanks for dropping by.
Samson Arthurs is the creation of author Shane Joseph in the novel AFTER THE FLOOD.
Shane Joseph began writing as a teenager living in Sri Lanka and has never stopped. From an early surge of short stories and radio play scripts, to humorous corporate skits, travelogues, case studies and technical papers, then novels, more short stories and essays, he continues to pursue the three pages-a-day maxim and keeps writer’s block at bay.
His career stints include: stage and radio actor, pop musician, encyclopaedia salesman, lathe machine operator, airline executive, travel agency manager, vice president of a global financial services company, software services salesperson, and management consultant.
Self-taught, with four degrees under his belt obtained through distance education, Shane is an avid traveller and has visited one country for every year of his life. He fondly recalls incidents during his travels as real lessons he could never have learned in school: husky driving in Finland with no training, trekking the Inca Trail in Peru through an unending rainstorm, hitch-hiking in Australia without a map, escaping a wild elephant in Zambia, and being stranded without money in Denmark, are some of his memories.
Shane is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and studied under the mentorship of Giller Prize and Governor General’s Award winning author David Adams Richards. Redemption in Paradise, his first novel, was published in 2004. Fringe Dwellers, his first collection of short stories, was released in 2008, and is now in its second edition. Shane’s third work of fiction, After the Flood, a dystopian novel of hope, was released in November 2009. His short fiction has appeared in Existere magazine, in several Canadian anthologies and in literary magazines in India and Sri Lanka, and will be appearing in the USA and the UK in 2010.
After immigrating (twice), raising a family, building a career, and experiencing life’s many highs and lows, Shane has carved out a niche in Cobourg, Ontario with his wife Sarah, where he continues to work, write stories, sing in a dance band and play his guitar.
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