Author's Interview with M.R. Mathias

Before we dive into our exciting conversation with today’s remarkable author, let’s start by getting to know the creative mind behind the diverse and captivating stories.

1. Can you tell me a little about yourself and your background as an author?

I am a complex person, so this, like my books will not be a generic sound alike interview. I graduated H.S. with a scholarship in Creative Writing but wanted to be a rock star. I was not aware you could become a literary rock star at that time, or I might have tried that route. I think I will take this opportunity to explain some things since my mother and father have both passed and won’t be able to read it. I was the bass player in a 80s hair metal band, and on the guitar player’s Birthday, me and the singer and two girls were on the way to his birthday party. I was driving my best female friend’s car because she was in the back seat with the singer. She was not my girlfriend, but my ride or die. Through those awkward years we helped each other get laid, smoked weed, and just lived that late 80s small town America life. I was eighteen and recently graduated and we were having a blast. I mean best summer ever.

The old red dirt road we were on runs under I-40, and none of us thought about how it recently rained for a week straight. The stretch that matters is a long downhill slope, as you come down it you go under the freeway, and there is a section of flat concrete, so a downhill gravel road onto a concrete flat, as wide as four lanes of highway, then right back onto the steep gravel. I was probably going too fast, but I went down that road twice as fast a dozen times, with no problems. Only this time, the week of rain washed the dirt and gravel from the downhill side of the concrete so when we came down onto the concrete, the headlights show a concrete rectangle but beyond that there was nothing but darkness because the land fell away. Coming off the flat concrete there was an eighteen inch drop down to the grave, because the rain washed the road away. We were airborne halfway down the hill and when the car hit it bounced and this time it landed at an angle. Suddenly, the tires grabbed enough traction to take us right off the road into the gully where the tin horn ran under it at the bottom of the hill. We hit the metal guard rail first. The singer was launched over the passenger seat pushing that girl’s face into the front window. My ride or die went face first between the front seats, into the cassette deck. And I gripped the steering wheel so tight you could tell where my hands were on the warped steering wheel. I came too and was confused but I knew there was no one to see or hear the wreck, and my bestie’s face was in the dash wile one of er legs was still in back seat. It was connected but her thigh bone was not in her hip anymore.

I was wearing a canary yellow sweatshirt, and my left elbow went through the door window and had one sleeve covered I blood. I got out and struggled up the hill, and then up the steeper side of the highway, onto I-40 and tried to wave someone down. I did not know my jaw was broken and swollen and that I looked like Sloth from the Goonies in a bright yellow blood covered sweatshirt, to the passersby. No one stopped. No one. I was delirious and when I stepped over the guard rail to go back down, I fell and tumbled a hundred yards down the embankment. Sometime later I came too again, and didn’t even know where I was. I could see sirens spinning and went toward them. Looking back someone who saw me on the highway had to have called it in. There were two ambulances, and a girl was in each one. One of the First Responders saw me. I remember them sitting me in the passenger seat and grilling me on what happened and why did I leave the scene, and how many were in the car. He said I made three, and that sounded right. Then, a few moments later I remembered there was four of us. I told them and they climbed down there and found him, barely alive. When we it the guard rail the singer went right over the passenger seat and out the front glass before the car went over and nosed into his chest. He died in the hospital or on the ride to the hospital.

From that day forward, for many years, I did not care about anything at all. The singer was married but separated and he had a one-year-old son, who never got to know his father. Half of my hometown hugged me every time they saw me, and the other half called me a murderer. Or tried to fight me.

I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs, and because of the washout, no one ever talked about filing charges, but because the county out there, didn’t want to get sued, they never reported anything about the road in the reports, either.

But jail was certainly my destiny because I did not care about rules, or feelings, or consequences after that night. I only cared about things that numbed my guilt and pain.

2. What inspired you to write your current book?

A few years later I went to jail in Oklahoma for stealing guitars, I mean fifty or sixty guitars from counties all over the state. That prison sentence probably saved my life. It certainly saved me from myself. But I did almost every day of a seven-year sentence in a state that was giving away three for one goodtime. Which means I should have only been there for a year and half or two years. But I did drugs in prison, and got a new tattoo every month, and played poker with people doing 40 to life who would stab you over a cookie. Each time they spotted a new tattoo; I lost all my goodtime. Every dirty urine test caused the same. I still did not care.

But I wrote a two-hundred-page book called Buxley House that I later published as The Butcher’s Boy, The Ballad of Billy Bad Ass. What I didn’t know, was I crossed the hurdle that kills most potential authors. I finished writing a book.

That was my first, and when I was done, I mailed it out to my mother, with a few short stories including Crimzon and Clover, Orphaned Dragon Lucky Girl. I didn’t even remember them until twenty-some-odd years later when I got out of Texas prison, for drugs.

3. So that was your first novel? How many have you written now?

Now I have 78 titles available. Most of them tie to a single massive fantasy world. But those weren’t written until twenty-one years further into my future. I worked my way up from a ewby hand, to a Forman on a steel erection crew in DFW. And had another band with some of the guys who worked there. We recorded a CD, played lots of crazy biker gigs. Did a lot of drugs and I eventually lost the job. I sometimes lived in the cab of my truck, or cheap motels, and stole stuff to get drugs. It sounds like I bottomed out, right? I got hired as a Superintendent by a bigger construction company a few weeks later. We installed elevators in all of Ft Worth, Texas ISD’s old redbrick school buildings, and the engineers came to me to ask what connection they needed to draw for the inspectors.

When my mom and dad were still alive, I could only reveal tiny bits of who I really am and what someone must suffer through and survive to be able to write a 400k world trilogy with four hundred well defined characters, without an outline or really a clue where I was going with it,  and in ink pen on notebook paper no less, and end up with a million seller. 

(Shout out to Raymond E. Fiest )

4. What is the title of your current book, and when was it published (or when is the planned release date)?

My current project is called Devious Arcana. The first three of six, or possibly nine, books are available, and book four is halfway finished. So far, it is doing well. The trilogy boxset is a #1 Hot New Release in YA Pirate books and ranked top 10 in YA shapeshifter, and YA Vampire books. But to me it is an all-ages Time -Travel Romance set in the fantastical world I created in The Wardstone Trilogy.

I honestly do not care about reviews and promotion. I need you guys to go out and buy and review my books as if peoples lives depend on it, because my wife has Parkinson’s, and nothing matters to me more than taking her on the few trips she wants to take before her tremor gets any worse.

Suzza Sarra and I also have a project with two books complete, and more on the way. It is called The Adventures of Xak Stellar. I wrote it as a sexy adult fairy tale, and then she cut away all the bad words, sexual motivations, and battle gore. Now it is an amazing epic fantasy that rivals C, S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, and Tolkien’s work. I really couldn’t be prouder of her effort, and what she saw in the core material underneath all my coarse realism.

5. Can you provide a brief synopsis of the book?

 

I am a firm believer in the magic of literature. Not cover art, videos, or fancy blurbs. Those are all fine and dandy but are only what you must have to sell a book that can’t sell itself. It sounds old school, but readers read, and authors write, and everyone charging money between those two positions is out to make money off either. Retailers included, but they are necessary. If you can make a 30 second reel or BookTok, that can sell a book, you should be trying to make a 30 minute short film of your own creation, not a trying to score a hundred bucks off mine. What is between the covers is the only thing that matters in my books. You can’t single them down to three genres, much-less one, or summarize them well, with a few hundred words. 

 

6. What themes or messages do you hope readers take away from your work?

 

Mostly because I was raised by my mother and my grandmother, who both kicked the door off the hinges I the man’s world they lived in, and thrived without a man, all my female characters are tough smart and capable. There are few damsels in my worlds. There is nothing more terrifying to men who are used to dominating the world around them than a girl with a dragon, and I was writing that kind of thing long before G.R.R.Martin. In fact, one of the best thigs I can say about The Wardstone Trilogy, Perpetual Fantastica, and The Legend of Vanx Malic, is he and the HBO series had zero influence, nor did Harry Potter or the Hunger Games or Twilight; Mine were created before those were published or were not yet on my radar. Now everything I read feels like it was cloned off one of those authors or Tolkien.

But to directly answer the question, I want every human, green, yellow, pink, or brown who reads my work, to watch the characters who strive to reach their goals and grasp the power of what is called the wisdom of the ages. Which comes in many forms, 

 

7. Do you have any existing reviews or endorsements for the book?

 

I have thousands of reviews for the series I listed above, but I wrote those before I could type or understood POV, and the importance of good editing. Those series I wrote were done without knowing Kindle existed, and with no real intention of publishing. I wrote them to stay sane while I was locked up. They have high quality edits now, but Devious Arcana is me and my laptop, and after my first draft, it only gets a proofread before publishing. The Adventures of Xak Stellar, is publishing house quality because Suzza Sarra is meticulous and thorough, and the best.

I must make a shout out to the Nameless Dwarf who saved my bacon in the early days with some harsh lessons and eye frying edits.

8. Have you engaged in any book promotion or marketing so far? If so, what strategies have you used?Are you currently active on social media? If so, which platforms do you use?

  

My marketing strategy is to provide solid reading entertainment that is both larger and of a higher quality, than everyone else. I want one of my books with its faded gray hardcover and no dust jacket to get picked up by someone in a library, or off the bookshelf of an AirBnB and the person not read another author or come up for air, until they finish all 7 of my series. 

Like I said earlier I believe in the magic of what is in between the covers of a book. Sure, I miss all the impulse buys an expensive cover, and high dollar promotions bring, but I wrote the core content of most of my material to stay sane, not to make money. I want my grandchildren’s kids to get royalty checks that will cover their higher educations. My boys are 27 and 20, and neither are married and right now, I can barely cover our bills, but that is because I walked away from writing and social media for a while. Looking back at the last few years, it was the smartest thig I’ve ever done, because I can’t hold my tongue, or pretend to be something I am not. 

I have almost 200k Twitter/X followers @DahgMahn, 12k Facebook followers @DahgMahn, 6k Instagram followers @DahgMahn, and 23.5k Amazon Author page followers. I get dozens of DMs a day.Mostly on Facebook from people claiming to be book promoters, they probably do well off of new authors who still think a few reviews, or a two-minute trailer is what they are missing. I can tell by the first question or comment if they deserve a response. When I look them up they have a fraction of the followers I personally do, and they have no idea I have ten times their reach because 80% or more of my X followers have been following me since 2010 and are author or readers, or proven promoters, publishers, and industry folks. They also say they love my book’s cover and throw flattery at me as if I just fell off the turnip truck. Lately, I send them a link to my twitter and tell them I will send out a tweet for $10 bucks so they can get some more followers, just to mess with them.

I will run a promotion on Kindle Nation daily or Book Barbarian, Bargain Booksy, or FREE Booksy , every now and then, I keep wanting a reason to say good things about BooksButterfly, or BookBub, but they can’t even match what I get from my own promotions, which makes them useless. I swear they charge 500 bucks and want your book to be $1, so they can spend $100 of the $500 you pay them buying your book 20 times a day for 5 days. Which elevates the book I the charts enough for the algorithm to give it visibility, but the negative effect of those flash sales is your book then becomes listed in the “customers also bought section” with the cookbooks and other genres not reflected in your work, and a few days later your RomCom will have dog grooming manuals and Vampire porn serials listed in the “Customers, also bought” section on your books page. Sometimes it pays off, and you get the right reader or reviewer, that day, but nah. Amazon’s AI knows if your book gets read, or if people buy it and never finish it. I had that problem once, but it was because I used the same two stories as bonus content, in my books, and the algorithm thought people were not finishing them. Once I told KDP they were finishing the books but not reading the same bonus stories over and over we solved that issue.

9. Do you have a website, blog, or email list for your book or author brand?

mrmathiasbooks.com is my website and if you go there and hang around for thirty seconds an email request pops up. If you sign up, you get the first 5 Crimzon and Clover short stories and a surprise or two delivered to your inbox. I will NEVER send you an email. It only auto sends my new release alerts.

10. Have you done any media appearances, interviews, or podcasts related to your book?

“Google: Publishers Weekly: As Luck Would Have It” 

And my Indy Kindle giveaways on FantasyBookCritic.Blogspot.com We had all sorts of authors donate a books and put them all on a kindle, then gave it away. But FBC listed those authors and kept the post up a month, so they all received attention.

11. What are your primary goals for book promotion? (e.g., sales, visibility, brand growth, media coverage, awards, etc.)

I want sales from people who intend to read my book because the free sample or word of mouth intrigued them, not the fifty word blurb or the cover. I guarantee you the KDP people hate me because I need to see the book, in the store with the cover, and I may change covers two or three times, in a week after a book goes live.

12. Are you interested in specific promotional services like social media marketing, email campaigns, press outreach, or paid advertising?

I am interested in trading, my promotional reach, of someone’s books or book service to my 200k industry followers, for the services I may need in return, but honestly if you go to my dashboard, you will see that 85% of my royalties come from Kindle Unlimited Readers, not sales. Most people who read one of my series end up knocking out two or three more.

13. Do you have a preferred budget range for marketing efforts?

Free or trade, I will only pay money for something more than once, if it gets me my money back + money, something that will pay for itself +,  I would rather spend my money for a membership at Author’s Den, The Authors Guild, and Independent Authors Network, or the Online Book Club because those promoters have to answer to other members, and maintain a standard. Some of the people who contact me on Facebook come with strong enough game for me to pay attention and dip my toes, but usually they want to get paid in strange bitcoin, other unsafe method. 

14. Where is your book currently available for purchase?

Amazon.com in Kindle, audiobook, and paperback, and of course Kindle Unlimited. Less than 5% of my sales are from paperbacks.  It is a subscription world now, especially for avid voracious readers who want to have a bookstore in their lap, instead of wasting fuel and laying 25+ a book at the brick and mortar

15. Are you open to running promotional discounts or giveaways?

With 70+ titles I always have a free book available for kindle and always have a countdown deal available. If you are patient and ask Amazon to send out real updates of my sales and new releases, overtime you can get most of any series I have free. But you will pay for the last book in a series.

16. What do you look for in a book promoter? Have you worked with one before?  How involved do you want to be in the promotion process? And What’s your ideal outcome for this collaboration?

All of these have the same answer. If you want to make money off my books in any meaningful way, become a publisher and offer me an advance to write something you know you can sell. I can write a 200-300k word trilogy in six months, in just about any genre. I have a 70 book resumes.  Most authors forgot or ever knew, the best way to sell more books is to spend your time writing more books, not so much for the content, but because each book you complete makes you that much better.

I need to tie up some loose ends before I rest my eyes, with you guys. My ride or die’s leg healed fine, but her beautiful face hit the dashboard, and the little metal spike old school radio knobs fit onto, ripped her face from the corner of her mouth up her cheek. She never had surgery to fix it, and she is still beautiful. She ended up marrying an FBI agent and raising a wonderful family.

The other girl had some facial bone damage and got it repaired. We were not close, and after she recovered, we lost touch.

My wonderful mother created a trust for the singer’s son. His mother hated my guts, but I only care what happens to him.

My elbow shattered the window and is still a grindy gritty joint, but my knees are worse. My jaw had a hair line fracture, that was tested a few times in jail. And it held up just fine, but my mental health has always and will always be a challenge. My mother was my greatest friend, and she was the head librarian at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La. and though it destroyed my soul watching her die slowly of Cancer, over five years in my house, we spent many an afternoon smoking weed and watching those kid cupcake challenges, and in those years, I made enough in Amazon royalties that her last few years were a carousel of fine dining delivery, rich deserts, and cookies and cakes galore.  She always told me I was too smart for my own good, which is true, because I can sense what is “really” happening, when things are being manipulated. Like my Facebook post about AI knowing too much about my content which I posted a full week before the Atlantic article came out.

Lastly, I want to say something about AI. I was a musician in the 80s when synthesisers started creating drums and full-bodied music that could replace an entire band. They said the sky was falling, that guitar rock was over, but that isn’t what happened. This sort of the same thing. AI can’t make the art you want if you don’t prompt it right and understand light and shadow, so artists will still be the ones profiting from it. I keep getting dragons with a head on each end, or with two tails. Canva, NightCafe, and even Shutterstock have great creation tools, but I like the Designer studio that came with my Microsoft 36o subscription. All the BookTok, and BookTrailer fanatics are the ones using it most. And that is why there so much hype around the short videos. They don’t just sell books. They sell creation subscriptions.

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