Matthew James Jones is a poet, novelist, storyteller and veteran whose novel Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures is available in Canada, France, the US, the UK, and Germany. Today, Matt writes and teaches in Paris: leadership at the École Militaire and creative writing at SciencesPo. His many published works interrogate themes of dehumanization, poetics, monsters, masculinity, cross-cultural exchange, and healing. He also co-hosts the by-donation Write Time workshop, and organizes fitness enthusiasts who use trees as barbells: the Log Club. @matthew_jones_writer
Where were you born and raised? How did it influence your writing and your thinking about the world? Mostly, Kingston, Ontario, Canada - my Mom's place was nestled between a prison and swamp - part of me always wanted to escape. The brutal winters, often -40, ironically made us warmer people. My parents were both from Newfoundland, east coast of Canada, this blasted heath, a windswept stone in the Atlantic, barren. Fiddle music and the whole Christmas dinner boiled in a single, salty pot. Growing up with such humble fare made me want to eat the whole world.
What role did books play in your early life—and which ones made the biggest impression? I was the kid who hid in books. Nestled on a window sill, the sun made the red curtain glow pink - no one could find me. Only the yelling would cut through, or my brother's hand would find my ankle for more lessons of the fist. I skipped a grade and discovered loneliness, escaped deeper into stories of dragons and wizards and dragon-wizards. One night, Mom woke me up and pushed a book in my hands. "Read so loud your Dad can hear you," she said. He waited with bloody knuckles in the hall, so my little voice went up. I'm not sure if I fell in love with reading that day, but we needed a shield.
Describe your typical writing day. I sleep through the alarm clock so Clawdia licks my notes that I might rise, stroke her ears, and kill the buzzing. Read a little through breakfast and the morning coffee. Writing almost immediately in the morning is best, so that it's done, before the day can bring its distractions and excuses. One hour is a good minimum for pure first draft surge - editing goes longer. The military left me a systematic bastard so I always know what I'll write that day, because I fear the blank page like everyone. There will always be a spreadsheet or some other guideline, which will change a hundred times, but better that than discarding a 50,000-word draft which plummets, mid-flight. Perhaps the day's hooks will pull me (teaching being the most distracting) but after lunch I'll head to the Parc de La Villete, just down the street here in Paris, where I'll skip rope and dance with a stone.
Tell us about the creative process behind Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures. My most recent published work, "Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures" decries the horrors of drone war. It's about dehumanization and true love. It's about the sanitizing of language and how I tried to take it BACK. Wrote the first draft here in Paris, attending a weekly writing circle of the deep nerds, and performing excerpts on stages across Europe, to see how they landed. Eventually, the Canadian Council for the Arts blessed the project with a grant, allowing me to pay a dozen world-class editors, until the manuscript gleamed with a soft blue nimbus. Almost hit despair multiple times in those trenches of finding an agent and a publisher, but thanks to some lucky networking, I connected with Double Dagger Books, and now PRDC's a bestseller on Amazon. Last week I was promoting and performing in Canada. Next week I'll be Ireland, doing the same. My love is a German priestess of Art. She tells me all the types of worship are valid, so I'll give praise with pen and voice until my faith withers.
What kinds of thoughts, sketches, or fragments do you record while working on a book? Mostly breakdowns. I was diagnosed with PTSD after Afghanistan and the page is one of the few places I can safely explode. Good days rarely get a mention. Bad relationships got whole tomes. My therapist admits I am the most fun.
How do you research and what role does research play in your writing? Some writers can live entirely in their heads but I always wanted to live a story. First we fill the cup, then we pour it out on the page. Unfortunately, chasing stories into war zones and other brutal places comes with a cost. In my experience, grief will come for you anyway, and inspiration is the silver lining. I am concerned my students (I teach Creative Writing at SciencesPo university in Paris) have forgotten how to read, or never developed the muscle. The lure of Instagram scrolling is too strong, the dopamine rewards more immediate. I tell my students, "Be an ocean; read everything." Sure I drove warships for years in the Canadian Navy, but to write the ship-book I still needed to read Moby Dick, and at least a dozen others, before pen hit page.
Which writer, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with? Margaret Atwood. Salman Rushdie. Ideally in the same dinner.
When writing, do you draw on influences outside literature? Definitely, in all the forms (does anyone say no to this question? stacking book after book around themselves like bricks) particularly music. My German priestess tells me that fashion also tells a story, if your eye is wise - we explored the Dolce and Gabanna exhibit recently, as she lectured me on style and kitsch. Earlier we attended the Louvre's exhibit on fools. Conversations on the Gesamtkunstwerk (ultimate art form) bring us to the opera, and to video games. A good Morbier or Comte can be very inspiring. Since the ego seems to undermine so many writers, I promote training for humility: learning a second language, or lifting logs in the forest.
AI and technology are changing the ways we write and receive stories. What are your reflections on AI, technology and the future of storytelling? And why is it important that humans remain at the center of the creative process? Seems quite tragic that AI is absorbing creative gigs, and teaching students it's OK to hack your way through life. Still, the idea of an AI narrator who can flow and alter the story around its characters, like an old-school Dungeon Master, is most intriguing. Characters who spontaneously create language based on your decisions - an ever-changing story, infinitely re-playable - in the world of video games, AI existed since before Pacman, was necessary. But in writing? I suppose it will all work out. We will lose our capacity to produce complex/challenging texts at the same rate we will lose our capacity to appreciate them. In these days when AI has hollowed out the middle, it pays to have a fringe mind.
Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time. Currently re-reading bell hooks' "All About Love: New Visions" and picking my way through Atwood's "Good Bones." I like when a book extracts unwilling laughs on the metro: "Don Quixote" or "The Hitchhiker's Guide" do this well. I like the weird, wild words of an Ursula Le Guin or a China Mieville. The poetry of a Maya Angelou. Rushdie's garrulous narrators. A war story, like Slaughterhouse V, that breaks the rules and reminds us of the waste.
Exploring literature, the arts, and the creative process connects me to… community. Like Bodies of Work Paris, where I volunteer. They promote artistic events that also encourage mental and physical well-being: an open mic, a recurring zine, more. Or The Wrath-Bearing Tree, a magazine that fosters the writing of veterans and beyond. Except for the lucky few chosen by the great claw of culture, most humans find writing and making art ultimately heartbreaking. They learn to love the journey, or quit.
