Local Author Spotlight: Matthew H. Jones
Local Author Spotlight
Matthew H. Jones
Please describe your writing routine. Is there a time of day or place that is most productive for you?
I’m most comfortable laying down with two cups of coffee in me. In the past two years, I went from being single with no kids to being engaged with two preteens. This, of course, has affected my writing. Prior, I’d be some kind of writing goblin, laying in the dark in my underwear, being left alone for three days at a time. And now, there’s no silence. There is no peace.
Is there anything in Lowell or in the surrounding area that has inspired your work? Such a place to take nice walks or a piece of artwork?
Several of my stories at based in Lowell, Massachusetts. In No Magic for Luke Peters, where running away from the Dark Man, Luke smashes Perkins’ beat-up truck through a concrete barricade and splashed down into the icy Merrimack River. I choreographed that scene while walking down the Riverwalk And, in Wish I Could Love You: A Collection of Failed Love Stories, I based several of the stories on people I’ve met and locations I’ve been.
What do you believe are the most important elements of writing? How do you incorporate it into your own work?
Perseverance – even more than talent, being able to keep at the work when the work gets hard gets the work done. Over the years, I’ve met immensely talented writers who talked themselves out of putting their fingers on the keyboard.
What advice would you give to a young writer and/or a writer starting their first creative work?
Keep writing. There are a million reasons not to do the work. If it matters to you, then none of those reasons matter.
What were your favorite books when you were a child?
Growing up, I randomly flew into the Henry and Mudge picture book series. Like everyone else, I read Harry Potter. I read Animorphs. And, at age twelve, I was dragonized with Macular Degeneration and was introduced to talking book library. The Perkins school for the blind distributed the audiobooks, and they sent me everything. And I mean everything.
Do you have any reading recommendations?
The Plague Confessor by Meg Smith, and Bribe by S. R. Marks.
Matthew H. Jones writes horror, fantasy and generally strange fiction. He’s a blind, Back guy with a big head and uneven legs. He unilaterally declared himself the best African American writer with Macular Degeneration in Lowell. And he welcomes anyone to try and take his throne. Unfortunately, people find him enough of a novelty that he’s managed to use his diversity as a marketing tool. His stuff is pretty good, even without it being written by a blind, Black guy.
After getting beat up in love and life, he spilled that onto his page, and he saw himself there. He found someone quiet, weary, worn, angry and lonely. He was funny but bitter. He was contemplative but cynical. That gasp of himself became the short story collection titled Wish I Could Love You: A Collection of Failed Love Stories. He was still kind of sad and angry. Therapy helped with that. His father’s family came from slaves on a plantation in Barbados. His mother’s family came from slaves on a plantation in Texas. He had been writing seriously for ten years before he started to confront that fact. His grappling created the novels, The Rules Don’t Apply and In the Hotel Zion. Lastly, he wrote the non-fiction piece Remembering Eugene Williams and The Red Summer of 1919.
His works are available on Amazon.
Follow him on:
Facebook: @MatthewHJonesAuthor
Twitter: @MatthewHJones
Instagram: @MatthewHJonesAuthor
TikTok: @Matthewh.jones