Q & A with Kevin Major

1. What city/country would you most like to visit and why?

My favourite country to visit is France. I love the food and wine! I speak a little of the language, at least enough to get by, so that helps. The country is quite diverse in landscape and culture, and outside Paris I’ve found the people to be very welcoming. I especially love the aromas to be discovered in their open-air food markets!

2. What kind of music do you listen to?

A variety. At least once every couple of weeks it is the band my two sons play in—Mercy, the Sexton. They practice in our basement. Other than that—world music (especially African) and jazz are my favourites. A couple of years back I did a weekly program of world music for CHMR, ie. MUN radio. They replay some of them from time to time.

3. What is your favourite movie(s)?

I’m not a regular movie-goer. Nor do I watch a lot at home. I do like Woody Allen movies very much, and foreign language films. My favourite movie of the past year is Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

4. What was your favourite book(s) when you were a child?

I didn’t have a rich literary childhood. I was read to, but there is nothing that stands out, so the books likely weren’t very good. Only as I got older and was reading for myself did books start to hold meaning for me. I went through a Hardy Boys phase, as did a lot of boys of my generation. Then the teenage leap was to Ian Fleming (quite a leap!). That was one of the real joys of having children—being able to read to them the great books that didn’t show up in my own early childhood.

5. What are you reading now?

The book is volume one of a trilogy of novels by the Spanish writer Javier Marias. It’s called Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear. A favourite recent read is Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture.

6. When do you like to write (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your writing (location)?

My favourite time is early in the morning, before the rest of the house is awake, say 5:30 to 9:00. I especially like it when it is still dark and as I look out my window from time to time the world gradually turns light. I write most every day, except when I am away from home. I have an office. It is in the upper reaches of our house, and I can just see Cabot Tower when the leaves are off the trees. Nice.

7. What was your first piece in print (book, review, or article, etc)?

I came across it a few months ago in fact. It was a short story published in the now defunct Atlantic Advocate magazine, published in the early 1970s. It was—guess what—a story about Christmas.

8. What character from your book(s) is the most like you? What one would you most like to be?

Most like me? Probably Lorne in Thirty-Six Exposures or Alan Hayward in No Man’s Land. Which one I would most like to be?  Gaffer. Who wouldn’t like to be able to live both on land and in the ocean, and emerge at different points in history?!

9. What other jobs have you had besides being a writer?

I was a junior high and high school teacher for a number of years. I once dug ditches in sand as a summer job. One of my favourites, through three summers while at university, was working as a baggage handler / ramp worker for Air Canada in Stephenville. I would sometimes get to direct the plane into the parking position using those light sticks. What a thrill. (We also got to eat the leftover meals . . .)

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

What is the single most important attribute needed to survive as a published writer?

Self-confidence. Because I write in several different genres (young adult fiction, adult fiction, adult non-fiction, children’s books, poetry) publishers are constantly questioning whether a new direction is a good move on my part. That’s where self-confidence becomes paramount. You have to believe in yourself and in a potential audience for what you write, knowing it is likely not the same audience who bought your last book.