. Burning Secret blurs the line between fact and fiction, a retelling of the extraordinary life of Harry Mason - deceit, violence, power and wealth.
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Roger is the great-great-grandson of the main character, Enoch Price. A former senior police officer and detective, he has used his investigative skills to fashion this dramatised account of his ancestor’s extraordinary life. Fifteen years of genealogical research and interviews support the various factual strands of this pacy novel.
Roger graduated from both Warwick and UWE and has been a non-executive director with the NHS, social housing, and other charities.
He is retired and lives in Bristol with his wife. He travels, writes and produces delicious plum jam from the trees on his award-winning allotment.
Read my review here!
Author Interview
Tell us about your book:
Burning Secret - It’s a true story. Well, almost, at least in my imagination. Burning Secret blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it reconstructs the real-life of Harry Mason, and is a story that many of us can relate to in our own families. It begins with Enoch Price, my great-great-grandfather, being born into the poverty of the Bristol slums of 1844, but he was determined not to follow his father to a brutal and early death.
An ambitious youth, Enoch becomes a bare-knuckle fighter amongst London’s underworld. But when misfortune befalls him and, facing ruin and imprisonment, he abandons his wife and daughters and flees to Florida. It’s here that Enoch becomes Harry Mason.
An opportunist by nature, Harry embarks on a series of risky escapades, playing an important role in the development and history of Jacksonville, building an extraordinary new life of wealth and power.
Enjoying popular success, Harry is elected to the city council and, in 1903, to the Florida State House of Representatives with the prospect of becoming State Governor. However, success brings neither happiness nor contentment. Seeking redemption for his many misdeeds, Harry plans to return home - but life is rarely that simple, especially as Harry harbours a secret that burns deep inside him.
I think the story operates on several levels; as a fast-paced thriller with plenty of derring-do, a morality tale of good vs greed, and how life can easily corrupt the pursuit of happiness.
In a nutshell, tell us what your readers should know about you:
After retiring as a senior police officer, I turned my detective skills to genealogy, tracing my family history to the 16th century. However, after 15 years of extensive research, I couldn’t track down my great-great-grandfather, Enoch Price, whose wife, Eliza, had, in living memory, helped raise my mother.
It was my cousin Gillian who, after several more dead-ends, called one day to say that she had found him through a fluke encounter. Susan Sperry from California, who had recently retired, decided to explore the box of documents given to her thirty years before by her mother, which she had never opened. In the box, she found some references to her great grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotel owner from Florida who had died in 1919. It soon transpired that Susan’s great grandfather, Harry Mason, was, in fact, Enoch Price. From this single thread, the extraordinary story of Harry Mason began to unravel, leading me to visit the States to meet my American cousins, and it was Susan Sperry and Kimberly Mason, direct descendants, who persuaded me to write the book.
I graduated from Warwick with a joint in Philosophy and Psychology and a Masters in Marketing from UWE. Since leaving a thirty-year career in policing, I’ve been a non-executive director with the NHS, social housing, and other charities. I live with my wife in Bristol, spending my time travelling, writing and producing delicious plum jam from the trees on my award-winning allotment.
What topic or subject have you found it most challenging to write about?
I found the main character’s most inner thoughts and tormented emotions in Burning Secret were the most challenging. Describing the objective world of sights and sounds pose challenges, but conveying the emotions and heartache concealed deep inside, where often there are no overt behaviours, is made doubly worse by the writer’s advice of ‘show don’t tell.’
In my book, the main character must maintain a double life while burdened by the guilt that tortures him. Finding the words to describe his feelings as he struggles to resolve his dilemma was not easy, but these feelings play an important role in shedding light on the motives for what he has done.
What would you like to achieve with the publication of your book?
At the very least, I’d like to inspire others to wonder about their family history. Tracing ancestors has never been more popular or accessible, and what if these lost relatives turn out to be far more intriguing or extraordinary than one might have ever guessed – fact stranger than fiction?
Throughout my professional life, I’ve written; evidence to put before the courts and then, more latterly, reports to various statutory bodies seeking additional funding. You soon find out if your product is any good by the outcomes. So now I want to know if my novel and storytelling have merit, and it’ll be the readers who will decide through their reviews, recommendations and book sales.
What do you most enjoy about writing?
My first passion is gardening. There is so much pleasure when the blooms are in full blush during the warmth of a summer’s afternoon, and the vegetables swell and flourish. But this pleasure doesn’t come without pain and disappointments, and not everything you plant will grow or be good enough to reach the judges’ show table.
And perhaps writing is similar. Writing is not always enjoyable. Sometimes it can be frustrating, tedious and difficult when the ideas won’t fly, or the words won’t join into sentences. But like gardening, it’s creative. You create your version of the world, sharing your views and opinions with others and, like any conversation or standing on the box at Speaker’s Corner, not everyone will like what you have to say – but at least you’ve said it.
No two gardens are the same, which is true of authors and books, but the pride and joy of creating is.
How have you found your journey to publication?
Burning Secret arose from a conversation in 2012 with my two American cousins, Susan and Kimberley, who encouraged me to tell the extraordinary story of our shared ancestor, Harry Mason. It’s a massive disappointment that neither are with us today to witness its publication. And, as you’ll see, I’ve dedicated the book to their memory.
After many attempts at navigating the labyrinth of the query system, I realised that literary agents and publishers didn’t see me as a commercial prospect. At 70 years of age, I couldn’t waste time going down the traditional route. It wasn’t a career as an author I wanted; it was to fulfil a promise I’d made to Susan and Kim.
So, after reading an inspirational article by the best selling self-published author, Paige Weaver (Promise me darkness) and discovering that in 2017, over one million books were published in the United States, and two-thirds of them were self-published, the way forward was clear – and Matador, an imprint of Troubadour, was the obvious choice.
I liked the open and responsive team at Matador, who put me at the centre of decision-making and worked hard to meet their authors’ expectations to produce a book indistinguishable from a traditional publisher.
If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Well, I’m going to dodge this question. There’s never one piece of advice and too many what-ifs in life. I have one huge regret for not asking my parents about their lives and the history they lived through; two world wars, the Great Depression, rationing, the swinging sixties, and the roaring twenties. None of which they ever spoke about.
What do you think makes a good story?
This is the million-dollar question. There are plenty of creative writing courses that list the essentials of a good story. Some say there are three key elements, while others list ten; structure, character, plot, tension, and so on. I tend to go with the W. Somerset Maugham school of thought, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
But more seriously, a story that grabs and holds my interest must be authentic, relevant, and real to my experiences and imagination. Most of which depends on the storytelling and the flow of the language. I’m impatient, so a plot must race along to keep me turning the pages, and I want a main character that I can keep rooting for, even if they’re a bit iffy. And I like a book that keeps me thinking long after I’ve come to its end.
Do you have any tips for other budding authors?
Tell your story in your own voice, write from the heart and persevere, despite the naysayers - of which there will be many. Writing can sometimes be a slog, but you’ve got to keep going. If you’re going to publish, then invest in a good cover and quality production. Money spent on editing and proofreading is never wasted. There’s little point in going through the wringer to publish if no one is going to read it, so give it your best shot with marketing, and these days that means social media. Marketing is enormously important, but it’s tough, and most writers I meet wince at having to traipse around selling their cherished work. Still, the sad truth is, no one else is going to do it for you, not even in traditional publishing - but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.
Do you have a set writing routine and where do you like to write?
I’d like to tell you I write on my verandah overlooking the tropical Caribbean Sea, like Fleming at Goldeneye or Hemingway at his Lookout Farm in Cuba, but I can’t. I write from a small bedroom office.
One thing I like to do is to have a routine. My background, I suppose, has instilled the need to plan and schedule. Most of my productive writing occurs between 8 am and midday, but that’s not when I do my best thinking. That’s during the afternoons pottering in the garden or on the allotment. But clarity of thought, when all the ideas gel together, seems to arrive just as I’m about to nod off to sleep. And from bitter experience, I’ve learnt that I must wake myself and make notes because, by morning, every recollection will have deserted me.
What’s next in the writing pipeline for you?
I’m currently working on a couple of projects. The first is about another one of my close ancestors, Frederick Henry Seddon, who was hanged at HMP Pentonville for murder in 1912. His story has been told before, but never, as far as I know, from the family’s perspective. Another project involves a recently discovered family connection with two brothers, Peter and Veniamin Timkov, from the Russian village of Mukhouderovka, where Stalin’s secret police executed them both.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
When one starts writing, it’s difficult to identify yourself as an author. But you only have to look at Twitter or Facebook to see how social media has democratised writing and has given a voice to so many aspiring authors - so please, have a go.
I’ve learnt such a lot from being involved in the process of publication. Next time I’ll be much better prepared, thinking about the title and book cover long before writing the opening paragraph.
I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone at Matador for their hard work and tremendous talent, and patience in bringing Burning Secret to the market.
Excerpt
A moment later, a gust of cool fresh air struck Harry in the face. Taking a deep breath, it felt refreshing and pleasant, a welcome relief from the hot, stifling smoke, but before he could exhale, the horror of it dawned. The wind had turned and was now blowing due south towards him. This fresh, invigorating breeze fanned the glowing embers like a blacksmith’s bellows, roaring the fire back into action. Within seconds, it had again built to an inferno, destroying buildings as if made of paper and card. The blaze was worse than before, launching itself across Beaver Street, smashing into Ashley, then south into Church Street. Ten blocks disappeared in the space of minutes. Haney and his crews were seen in Newman Street running for their lives, pumps and horses abandoned. At Main Street, they regrouped to face the onslaught, but it was futile. The Church of the Immaculate Conception exploded and crashed to the ground as a pile of burning debris. At this rate of advance, it would take less than an hour before the fire levelled City Hall, the courthouse and armoury. Nothing could withstand its force. Neither brick, stone nor walls of granite provided any defence to its renewed ferocity. Harry and Munoz watched in horror as three blocks north, a pencil- thin tornado of roaring gases and jets of hot flame whipped and twisted hundreds of feet upwards. This whirlwind of fire dipped and wrapped its flowing skirt around the elegant St James Hotel before ripping it out by its roots, the whole block vanishing into the sky as a flash of blinding heat.
Munoz grabbed Harry by the arm. ‘My God, it’s coming! Mr Mason, we must leave. The Devil himself is upon us!’
But the fiery orb mesmerised Harry’s attention. Munoz slapped him hard.
‘No!’ screamed Harry. ‘I can’t lose again. I must fight.’ ‘Mr Mason, if we stay, we’ll die.’
At that moment, their attention was drawn to a commotion in the street below. Freshly arrived from Savannah, fire crews were careering up from the train station, bells clanging and horns hooting. Two large steam- driven pumps on heavy wagons, each pulled by six snarling, chestnut drays, sped wildly along West Bay Street. Harry and Munoz were transfixed as forty firefighters followed close behind, jogging in close order towards the danger. The two spectators allowed their gaze to follow the parade to the intersection with Laura Street, where Haney and his men had reassembled. Long hoses were being hurriedly unreeled and connected to the nearby jetty hydrants.
‘Look, Mr Mason. They are preparing an action to fight. Here is where your hotel is saved,’ said Munoz, wrapping a firm hand around Harry’s wrist, dragging him away from the decking and pushing him hard through the trapdoor of their crow’s nest. Munoz came behind, helter-skelter down the wooden stairs they went, through the clock tower and into the foyer where Harry’s staff had gathered. Every one of them terrified and ready to desert. Munoz, commanding them in melodramatic style, said, ‘Come, gentlemen. Take up your buckets and follow. We will save our hotel.’
Outside on the street, Harry urged his men on as hot embers showered down, scorching holes in their clothes and catching their hair. Harry and Munoz jumped into a buggy and drove furiously towards Haney and his congregation of firefighters. The heat was so fierce, the buggy’s canopy burst spontaneously into flames. The horse, its eyes bulging in terror, reared and kicked, frantically whinnying in distress. Harry leapt forward, releasing the traces, allowing the terrified creature to escape at a wild gallop along West Bay.
Harry’s band of porters, bellhops and kitchen boys ran to make up the distance, frantically pulling their hoses on two dog carts found abandoned on the sidewalk. In their grey and burgundy-striped uniforms, they had the appearance of a gang of crazed convicts.
At the junction of West Bay and Laura Street, Haney’s men were hampered by crowds of panic-stricken refugees packing the jetties in the hope of salvation across the river.
