Ben Overby
Staff Writer
boverby@murraystate.edu
Former Murray State English professor and current fiction editor of “Hyphen Magazine” James Han Mattson’s second novel “Reprieve” will be released on Oct. 5, 2021.
Mattson’s first novel, “The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves” was released in 2017. It told the story of a young man struggling with his sexual orientation in a small town, who kills a classmate bullying him and then himself. The novel uses multiple points of view as well as emails and online chat room exchanges to explore the event and its aftermath.
“The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves” received great critical acclaim, including being a New York Post Required Reading selection and an Amazon Books Best of the Month pick. Though Mattson was pleased with the good reviews, he doesn’t let reception pressure him as a writer.
“When a book goes out in the world, you lose all control; it becomes a product to be consumed,” Mattson said. “I hope ‘Reprieve’ does well, of course, and I’m happy with the positive reception I received for my first novel, but ultimately what matters is that the book, in its final form, is something I believe in and stand by. Everything else is just business—I can’t think too hard about stuff like that or I’ll drive myself mad.”
In “Reprieve” Mattson delves into the horror genre. The novel, which he has been working on for five years, will tackle a number of social issues.
“It’s about a murder that takes place at a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is narrated by three witnesses—an employee of the haunt, a ‘contestant’ and the perpetrator of the crime,” Mattson said. “The book sweeps from Bangkok to Washington DC to Nebraska to San Francisco, and investigates themes of racial fetishism, racial injustice, misogyny, hate politics and capitalism.”
Telling a story through multiple points of view, as well as other departures from a traditional first person or third person narrative style, is a common thread in both of Mattson’s novels. He said writing from different perspectives breaks up the tedium of the writing process, as well as creates a more expansive experience for the reader.
Mattson said many people tend to go through life-altering experiences with other people, so adding multiple perspectives makes that experience more comprehensive.
“It can also serve as a good exercise in humanity, imagination and empathy; if you inhabit, as best you can, perspectives and ideologies that don’t necessarily align with your own, you deepen your understanding of things like injustice and suffering,” Mattson said. “Perhaps when you’re done, you’ve become a slightly better person.”
Mattson’s time teaching at Murray State, as well as many other universities across the country, has contributed to his growth as a writer.
“Teaching has been instrumental in my writing, and there are many days I miss it,” Mattson said. “Critiquing and evaluating both published and student work has helped me critique and evaluate my own writing. Conveying the mechanics of craft to a classroom has helped me examine my own implementations.”
Mattson began to consider a career path as a novelist while living in California. After attending college in Minnesota, he hitched a ride with a friend to get out of the midwest. He got a job making course packets for professors at UC Berkeley during the day and worked nights at a small hotel in North Berkeley.
“There wasn’t much to do there but read and occasionally help the customers kill spiders, so I read novels from 7-11 p.m. three to four days per week,” Mattson said. “One night, as I was reading a particularly bad novel, a thought occurred to me: I could do this. So I asked my boss at the course packet company if I could stay after work and use the company computers to write. (I couldn’t afford a laptop at the time.) She said yes and four months later, I had a draft of a novel.”
Though Mattson said that novel was horrible, it proved to him that he could write one. He moved to Nebraska, worked odd jobs and took writing classes. He later went to grad school for creative writing and said the rest is history.
“Reprieve” is scheduled to release Oct. 5 from William Morrow/HarperCollins in the U.S. and BloomsburyUK in the U.K. Mattson’s film agent is currently pitching the novel to studios and production agencies for a possible future film adaptation.