Hello and welcome to 10 Quick Questions with Dave, I am your host Dave Tallman and chatting with me today is Malcolm Watts, author and photographer.

Dave:
I usually like to begin with some background information, could you share with us how you came to be interested in photography and writing?

Malcolm:
I have been fascinated with time, space and the nature of reality since I was a young child. Photography is an art form that freezes the moment – for me that is fascinating. It forces my attention to details in the world around me. Light, colour, composition – the camera is my brush – the world my subject, digital technology my easel.

The writing thing is interesting. I began writing after learning that my birth mother Linda (whom I never met ) was a writer. Linda wrote several historical screenplays and other works. After finding out this astonishing information, I decided I should give writing a try. Of course, I have always been interested in reading and writing, and wrote for the university newspaper but mostly I did more thinking about writing than actually doing it.

Dave:
You were a psychiatric social worker for thirty years how did that influence your writing?

Malcolm:
Working in mental health gave me a telescopic view of the world of people, their relationships, motivation, foibles, heroic and dark sides. My work with traumatized people over the years has perhaps led my writing to the dark side of human nature.

There is a lot of death in my stories – in fact I sometimes try to tell myself that the person doesn’t have to die every time I write a story and yet that is the outcome for all of us in this storyline called life. Maybe my writing reflects a certain collective consciousness of this fact.

Dave::
You have a novel out, what is it and where can we find it?

Malcolm:
Reflections from Shadow is available from Trafford.com, or Amazon. Trafford is quicker. Reviews of my book can be found at Trafford and also www.authorsden.com/malcolmwatts my main site. E-Book versions are also available. On my website, I also post my stories, poems, non-fiction pieces, and commentary.

Dave:
On your Authors Den page you have many posts and blogs, several were short stories and poems. How long have you been writing shorts and poetry and what are the driving factors behind them?

Malcolm:
I love language and somehow have a knack for couplets. I find it fun to combine my love of language with my curiosity about nature, reality, the human condition and future. Artificial intelligence, and quantum science are two areas of interest and I use these themes in certain poems. In fact, I use the term Quantum Poetry to describe some of my poetry but don’t know if I invented the term or just heard it somewhere.

I love short stories because I can write about one event and produce a finished product in a reasonable time frame. I especially love the challenge of writing short shorts – 250 words. Writing a short-short, or postcard story as they are sometimes called, challenges me to think very carefully about how to tell a story in a sparse, yet imaginative and interesting way. One of my recent short-shorts, was submitted to the Canadian Authors Association Short Short Contest. It is about a man having a near-death experience in the ER. There I go – death again – he lives though.

Dave:
In Reflections from Shadows who are your main characters and how did you create them?

Malcolm:
Jared is a bright child living away from his natural family since birth. He grows up with a large birthmark on his face, it has metaphorical meaning, and he has recurrent nightmares as he grows up related to Jewish prisoners and Naziis.

His foster mother Elizabeth is a main character. Evangelical, tough-minded, yet committed to Jared as any mother she represents many committed foster parents who deal with special needs foster children and get little recognition for their great service in this regard. At the same time she is misguided and misinformed in many ways.

A collection of other interesting characters populate the story such as Robby, his childhood friend, and his good friend Clarence that travels with Jared in Europe. They visit Dachau concentration camp museum in 1969 where Jared experiences a paranormal event that transports him to 1943 Dachau. He finds himself able to see what is happening there and learns a secret about himself that threatens his survival. The whole experience demolishes his understanding of physical reality as he previously understood it.

I create characters based on people I know and of course myself and out of my imagination. Characters must be created in a three dimensional manner so that the reader will care about them, and also so that they are believable. Fiction is telling a believable lie. Characters, their behavior and speech, must be convincing.

Dave:
You are the president of the Aurora Writers Group, Aurora Ontario, Canada. How many members are there involved in the group? And where can we find out more information about them?



Malcolm:
We have twenty members and recently published our second anthology titled

Aurora Storyalis II.

It is a collection of stories, poetry, and non-fiction. I managed the project and one of my photographs graces its cover. Anyone interested in the Aurora Writers Group can email me at mwatts.writer.yahoo.com We would love to hear from you.

Dave:
On your bio page, it states that you were brought up in “evangelical environs” but that you walked away from the “church” at age sixteen. How has that influenced your life and works?

Malcolm:
I consider my struggle against the religious dogma I grew up with a primary struggle of my life. Unlearning the fear and guilt and self-hatred thrust upon myself, and all children in the church, has been a challenge. I have come to believe that there is very likely no God – at least no personal God. If there was such a supreme being, he would not have allowed innocents to be led to mass slaughter in a systematic manner such as the holocaust. He would have intervened for sure. He would have scratched his head and said “Listen you people, enough is enough. Free will notwithstanding, this atrocity will stop.”

As for the Bible containing ultimate truth, it does not. It espouses some ideas that are sensile, and universal and found in many faiths and secular philosophies such as loving your neighbor. Nevertheless,  the Bible is not the word of God - it is the word of men, as are all other holy books.

In Sunday school, I would question who wrote the Bible and their answer was always unsatisfactory to me. They said, people wrote the Bible but were “ Inspired” by God. Why would God need a scribe? If God is so powerful, he could make the book of truth just appear out of thin air just as he is thought to have created the universe, and mankind. A book, after all, is nothing to create after you have created the universe. No, the Bible is a work of men. It is important to remember that certain books of the bible, such as the Gospel of Thomas, were dismissed as being not the word of God. The bible was assembled from a book of writings made by people, and many things were omitted. Theologian Elaine Pagel’s books on this subject are interesting. Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion, is a must read for people interested in these questions.

We live in a universe of billions of Galaxies with billions of stars and wondrous celestial phenomena that truly astound with their power and magnificence. The universe, however, was not created by a being. For one thing, it would be completely illogical for the most complex being imaginable, a supreme being, to exist prior to the existence of fundamental particles. On the other hand, it is true that the Quantum world is a most illogical place – at least when we try to apply human understanding to it.

Having said all this, I do believe in right and wrong and respect universal ideas based on common sense and decency, kindness, and the UN universal declaration of human rights. Religious zealots, of any faith, who want to take away people’s right to education, intellectual freedom, personal freedeom are scary and threaten civilization in my view. We must, however not conduct war against these people except as a last resort. Rather we must find clever ways to coexist with them until our world evolves to a better future. Helping the third world to defeat poverty, and develop basic infrastructure and economic health is the best route to this future, and to defeat the zealots.

Dave:
I noted that you are into parapsychology, where does that stem from? And what kinds of phenomena interest you?

Malcolm:
I am very interested in all forms of altered states of consciousness, the nature of mind, the nature of reality itself. I once saw an ugly, menacing creature sitting on my brother’s bed staring at me when I awoke one bright sunny morning when I was six years old. This fuelled my confusion about what is real, and not. I am very interested in dreaming, ghosts, UFO’s, crop circles.

Many things are not easily explained within our present scientific paradigm but that doesn't mean there are supernatural explanations. Rathaer, I think it suggests the multi-dimensional nature of the universe. Some scientists believe that our universe exists like a small bubble on the edge of a great pool of other bubble universes. Each of these operate according to different laws of physics and few would support life as we know it. This is called meme theory.

Dave:
Your site contains book and movie reviews as well as other subject, how long have you been reviewing and what are some of the best that you have seen or read?

Malcolm:
I began posting reviews three years ago when I set up my website. I love our Canadian Governor General Award winning author Joseph Boyden. His books Three Day Road, and Through Black Spruce are terrific. Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics was fun to review. My movie reviews of classic films such as On the Beach and Inherit the Wind are among my favourites.

Dave:
I like to end my interviews with one common question, what’s next for you? Where do you see yourself in a year from now?

Malcolm:
I have nearly completed a Social Work Memoir of my thirty years in the field. It is titled, Out from the Dream: Memoir of a Social Worker. I talk about my own past growing up as a ward of the province of Ontario with early exposure to social workers. I discuss my decision to become a social worker myself. My university training is explained, along with the ethical struggle that almost led to me quitting before I got started. Although I love writing and photography, Social Work was my calling. I am a born psychotherapist and had the privilege of helping many seriously distressed individuals of all ages.

Finally, I talk about the process of helping clients become hopeful and accomplish positive change. Included in the book are disguised but interesting case studies. I seek an agent and publisher for this 70,000 word book. mwatts.writer.yahoo.com

Next. I might rewrite my very first novel Runaway. It was never published. I learned the craft of novel writing with Runaway. It’s a great story about a lawyer who walks away from his affluent life in the U.S. at age 40 and disappears to Europe where he falls in love with a antiquarian bookshop owner and her greedy cousin. The= group of them become entangled with neo-Nazii’s because of the cousins greed after he discovers a secret in the bookshop related to art taken from Paris by Naziiis and never recovered. I look forward to a lot of fun restructuring and rewriting the novel.

Thank you so much for this interview. I enjoyed answering these intelligent questions and look forward to the readership checking out my site and Reflections from Shadow. www.authorsdencom/malcolmwatts