About "Mason Wilson & The Dead Bird Debacle"

     Mason Wilson & The Dead Bird Debacle is a quirky mystery-adventure for children aged around 10 and up and the rest of their family!  It's available currently as both a Kindle ebook on Amazon.com and also a professional-quality paperback edition.  Have a look at the trailer here:

 

 

What's the Blurb?

      Is Mason Wilson just another wimpy kid? Wimps don't embark on an unauthorized night-time trip to a strange, old factory; he'll do anything to stop his penniless family being thrown out of their home.

There's a mystery to solve to win the grand prize - if you hardly ever find dead birds lying around, why are whole flocks of them starting to fall from the sky all over the place? Does the Bible really say that it’s a sign of the end of the world?

Mason uncovers some gross goings-on and plans that will change the world for ever. Should he do the right thing and try and stop them? He’ll lose an opportunity of a lifetime if he does; still, when his parents find out he's gone missing, that will be the least of his worries!

 

Who are the characters?

• Mason Wilson - 12-year-old schoolboy, only child, Liverpool fan.


• Mr Theobald Finch – 73-year-old owner of a recycling factory. No other interests or experience.


• George O’Reilly OBE - current Chief Executive Officer of Coola Cola Inc., a ruthless operator whose only goal is to make money.


• Ollie Groves – 12 years old.  Mason’s best friend, reluctant basketball player and general sidekick.  Manchester United fan (much to Mason's disgust....)


•  Pastor Malcolm Arnold – Pastor at Mason’s church, never to be seen without his Ipad.


• Mr Phipps – veteran, rotund English teacher at Mason and Ollie’s school.  Volunteers teaching English as a foreign language to Eastern European immigrants.


•  Mum Wilson – house-proud housewife, mad driver and avid chick lit. reader.


•  Dad Wilson - self-employed mechanic and (alleged)  hopeless map reader.


• Granddad Wilson – 75-year-old retired ex-miner and pun-meister.


• Cliff Machs - oily PR guru with a nose for a story and for a money making opportunity.

How did this book come to be written?

I suppose the answer to that question starts with my writing influences. Growing up, I read plenty of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton (please don’t hold that against me!) and Anthony Buckeridge and progressed to enjoy the work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings. I doubt you will find any of the latter group in my work but you might well stumble across some of the former group.

I have always loved reading and writing. When I was a small child I planned to be an author. I eventually realized that such an occupation rarely pays the bills. I’ve written lots of non-fiction articles over the last 20 years, but I never really thought of putting pen to paper for a work of fiction – until 2006, that is.
 

I’d like to be able to tell you that the idea for this book came to me whilst reclining on a beach sipping a cocktail in Barbados, but sadly that wouldn’t be entirely truthful. Barbados was indeed involved but I was actually on the plane back from there when inspiration struck. Even more prosaic than that, the only thing I had to hand to jot down the basic outline on was a sick bag. It is, I suppose, just about one level up from writing on sheets of toilet paper, but nevertheless it was hardly an auspicious start.

I’ve no idea how the outline for this book came into my head back in 2006 but I know I’ve had immense difficulty in putting it out of my mind until it got to the point where, in July 2011, I finally committed to complete what I had started. I think the turning point was when I stumbled across a book by Trenton Lee Stewart entitled “The Mysterious Benedict Society”. As soon as I saw the cover and perused the contents, it struck a chord – this was the very type of book I had in mind to write and now I could see it could become a reality, in some form or other.
 

 

Tell us about your book cover!

Oh, OK - if you insist! Creating the book cover was a great experience.  I used a great website called 99designs.  All you need to do is set up a competition with a prize amount (you can choose from 3 levels) and set the design brief.  The designs come rolling in and you have to select some to go through to a final round where edits can be made and the final selection happens. 

It was fascinating to see the different designs that came in and a privilege to have the opportunity to interact with so many creative and talented people.  However, there could be only one winner and I was so happy with the final outcome.  The quirkiness, especially on the back cover, really gelled with my mindset when writing.  I can highly recommend www.99designs.com to any self-publisher.

 

Fact or fiction?

 

Before I wrote this book, I never imagined that so much research would be needed to write it. You might think that a children's book could easily be written off the top of your head, but I think you would be wrong (unless you're some kind of genius!)

 

Like Mason (the main character), I have tried to make the best use of the most powerful resource at my disposal - the internet. There have been five main areas of research:

1) finding urban myths to discuss prior to Mason finding the one that he ends up exploring
 

2) finding real answers that people have given to the question "why don't you ever see dead birds?"
 

3) exploring what the Bible has to say about birds, dead birds and an end of the world judgement
 

4) finding uses for feathers
 

5) looking for potential methods of killing birds en masse

 

I suppose you will have to read the book to find out exactly what the results of the research ended up being. I don't want to spoil too much of the plot for you. What the research taught me though is that sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, especially in reference to uses for feathers. All of the uses I come up with in the book are in fact completely real, despite some of them sounding really far-fetched!

By the time the book was done, fact and fiction became blurred, which I suppose is how you want it to be - the fantastical sounding almost believable.

When I think of how comparatively simple my book is compared to lots out there, I take my hat off to authors who spend years researching before they barely put pen to paper. And in this digital world, some of them might end up selling their magnus opus for 99 pence each!

 

One of the most difficult aspect of the research was being selective in what I used and what I discarded, trying to bear in mind what my target audience would or would not like. It's a great temptation to use absolutely everything you come across but that would completely bog down the pacing and make the book unreadable. Hopefully I have managed to strike a decent balance.

I suppose the most important research of all has been growing up in a medium-sized town in the north of England, in a very similar environment to which Mason finds himself. The old adage "write what you know" is a good one and people who know me and my family well will no doubt think the can spot certain characters or references from my earlier life.