Meet Michael Caleb Tasker author of Just Like the Night
In our debut spotlight series, we introduce you to your next favourite authors. This month, meet Michael Caleb Tasker!
About Michael
A&U: What was your favourite book or author growing up?
MCT: I was a late bloomer, reading wise. Read very little until I was about 14, so missed out on many of the younger or teen books. But impactful books at the age of 14 or 15 were Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat, Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf, T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Joseph Conrad’s shorter works, Romain Gary’s Promise at Dawn, Patricia Highsmith and Jim Thompson.
A&U: What did you want to be when you were a child?
MCT: Depends on the year; anything from a ninja to a great Shakespearean stage actor. I loved Shakespeare. Still do. I often thought I’d be a hobo, maybe ride the rails with a long-dead Kerouac, but that didn’t work out.
A&U: What is your Roman Empire? (A thing you think about far too often)
MCT: Ice cream, being a better father, whatever my current writing idea is, being a hobo.
A&U: If you could travel anywhere in the world instantly, where would you go?
MCT: Either to Paris with my daughter or to the Yukon, in Northern Canada (where I first learned how to lose at Blackjack). I love travelling, the actual movement, as much as the destinations. A lost road trip is always on the cards.
A&U: What are you reading right now or looking forward to reading this year?
MCT: I’m reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Mann had never been on my radar, but last year my daughter and I went to Paris and Mann (and Balzac) were everywhere, so I bought a copy of The Magic Mountain but am only getting to it now. I’m looking forward to reading a Walter Mosely on my shelf, one of his Easy Rawlins novels, and also looking forward to a forthcoming fantasy novel by Australia’s Michael Sala, who was a supervisor of mine at Uni.
About Writing
A&U: Tell us about your writing journey; did you always want to be an author?
MCT: Among other things (see above, the ninja). The first time I took writing seriously was in a class in the last year of my undergrad degree, when I was about 22. But then again, I stagnated until my master’s degree, a few years later, when I did a creative writing class with the late Jean Bedford. No one had ever been so encouraging. A couple of the short stories I wrote then got published and so I kept going with the short stories; tried to get better and better.
A&U: Tell us about your writing process. Are you a plotter, pantser – something in between?
MCT: I’m not sure. When I come to a piece I have a broad, general idea (story-wise) in mind. Scattered notes on torn pages and the like. The plot is not at all thought out or planned, but that said, the characters are already very full and complete. I’m fond of Fitzgerald’s adage that ‘character is plot, plot is character’, so I’m lucky there, character-wise. I do have maybe three scenes or events in mind that I want to happen along the way, but they often go astray. When I actually write, my thoughts/plan is usually only a scene or two ahead of where I am writing-wise. Of course, this means later re-writing and revision to make sure knots are tied.
A&U: If you could give some words of wisdom to yourself from when you first started writing this book, what would it be?
MCT: Work harder, think harder, find more quiet...
About the book
A&U: Where did the initial spark of inspiration for Just Like the Night come from?
MCT: Sera, the protagonist came to me pretty fully formed, as someone having difficulty adjusting to post prison life, and the other ideas built up around that over a long time. A lot of it is answering my own questions i.e. why is Sera, a good person, in prison? Why has her relationship with her daughter crumbled and why does she want it back? Different ways of dealing with questions of moral responsibility kept surfacing.
A&U: Share a little bit about your journey to publication. Were you querying for a while? Or did it all happen very fast?
MCT: It took forever. Or it seems that way to me. I had several American literary agents ask to read the whole novel, and have exclusivity while they did so. One by one. And they all took some months to get through it. The first two asked for changes that would have made it a different book, a book I had no interest in, and my current (and wonderful) literary agent asked for a few sensible edits or re-writes. That took some time and then my agent went out with it and received an offer from A&U fairly quickly.
A&U: Is there a part of the book that made you cry, laugh, or scream while writing it?
MCT: No. Some parts made me fall asleep. I cut those out.
A&U: What is one thing you would like people to take away from reading your book?
MCT: I hope readers enjoy the book, the stories, the people. So, enjoyment, in any sense.
Just Like the Night is available now from your book retailer of choice.
Just Like the Night
by Michael Caleb Tasker
When is it time to stop protecting family, and time to start running?
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