J:C:Mack, an English fiction and non fiction writer, was born in Newquay, Cornwall and educated in Salisbury and Winchester. After his degree he became a teacher. He published his first book in 2014. His interests are mainly literary, with a selective interest in opera, as well as a positive bias towards Renaissance art, and Romanesque architecture. He is a keen cook, experimenting with continental cuisine utilizing natural products, wild herbs and local wines.

“Where does a story come from?” is a question I never ask myself. If I’m not predisposed to write, I can’t claim that during this temporary interval something will inspire a driving force of creativity. For me, writing is an unpredictable function of imagination, and contrary to the belief that it is a mental faculty divorced from that which is real, it remains a conception perceived through the senses, especially those through which I see and hear. You might regard it, in this sense, as a simple random act of invention.
Essentially, my stories are based on the world I live in – your world – even if they are transposed into what seem imaginary situations with fictitious characters. The places, thoughts, actions and people exist, but not at the same time or in the same environment; a pot-pourri, blended and fused so the reader can recognise the aroma even if they cannot place it.
I like settings, so I use those I’m particularly interested in, for example: England, Italy, Russia; along with the history that created their literary temperament as well as all that is admirable, and all that is execrable; opening up places that perhaps we have never seen, peopled with actors we may have never known.
I’m also fascinated by characters, spending time reflecting on faces passed in the street, or transfixed in a portrait; reading into them a truth that may be real or imagined, ensuring that they don’t remain in a vacuum, and the reason, perhaps, why my plots are always crowded with people. Their place is in the real world, while I transpose them into my imaginary one, which in the end is only an expression of a fractured reality.
I am addicted to news from everywhere, and politics from anywhere. The stuff of novels jump out at you to find themselves in places they weren’t supposed to inhabit. The company my characters keep are thus always with strangers who might become friends or enemies, antagonists and protagonists, depending on an actual turn of events, or a whim of my imagination. The themes are universal, which is why they are sometimes controversial.
An idea is; therefore, like a tree thrusting itself out of the earth, growing branches in all directions without losing touch with the root of its creation. The novel begins as a seed, germinates and blossoms into a story, gathering its nutrition through events, speculations and conversations that form part of life: the matter of every day experiences.
In my stories the expected becoming the unexpected is omnipresent, creating a notion that turns into the opposite the reader might expect. By exploring and experiencing these ambiguous and unpredictable events, I hope to have built a journey for the reader that will be both enjoyable and worthwhile.