Lance Mason

Raised in rural California, Mason worked blue-collar jobs before studying at UCSB, Loyola (BSc), and UCLA (doctorate). He has held several teaching posts in the US, New Zealand, and Brazil, has presented at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies, and won a scholarship to the VCFA 2016 Postgraduate Writers Conference. His writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals, magazines, and professional journals, winning numerous awards as well as selection for The Best Travel Writing, Vol 11 (2016) and Sport Literate’s “Best of 2016.”

A Proficiency in Billiards, a book-length memoir collection, has met with favorable reviews. The Eunuch of Shanghai, Mason’s fourth novel, is a sequel to his third, The China Contract. These were preceded by The Brass Ring and Beachtown Blues (optioned for a film by Framework Studios, Los Angeles).

Mason has spent twenty years living and working overseas, and explored the world by foot, bicycle, motorcycle, kayak, helicopter, tramp steamer, sailboat, plane, train, and dugout canoe. New Zealand is the setting for portions of The China Contract, The Eunuch of Shanghai, parts of A Proficiency in Billiards, and many of his short works. He played rugby for fifteen years, shares an age-group record in the RAAM cycling race, has performed live theater in the US and New Zealand, and fly-fishes when possible.

Mason: “I admire the work of US fiction writers Loren Estleman, Scott Turow, Richard North Patterson, and Cormac McCarthy; contemporary overseas authors Le Carré, Ian Rankin, Trevanian, P. Susskind, and Alan Hollinghurst; the “classics,” G. Greene, Maugham, Forster, A. Trollope, and James Cain’s writing as a genre benchmark. My work is also informed by travel writers E. Newby, W. Thesiger, A. Moorehead, Gavin Young, B. Chatwin, P. Theroux, and Nicolas Crane.”