Walter Mason – Writer. Scholar. Dreamer. – Author of Destination Saigon and Destination Cambodia.

Welcome. You are my very first travel writer. Yay!

You are also supposed to be a calming spirit. Instead, our bar yarn has made me splutter my beer over the barmaid! You are one funny guy with a beautiful and unique outlook on life, travel writing and the universe. So lovely to meet you.

Here’s how our chat went…

Come on in. Grab a pew. What can I get you to go with your beer nuts? (Shandy? Wine Spritzer? Pink Lemonade?)

I’m afraid my formative years fell in the early 90s, so Long Island Iced Teas are my tipple of choice. It’s a terribly expensive habit.

Hey, did you hear the one about …

I laugh at almost everything – it gets me into terrible trouble. I am completely undiscriminating and roar with laughter at the jokes of 7 year-olds. I did smirk recently when I heard an author, asked to describe his early life, say: “I was born at a young age, in a hospital so I could be close to my mother…”

I’m a beer nut nut! What bar snack would you be and why?

In Vietnam they toast dried cuttlefish over coals – perfect with hot cans of beer poured over ice. I once lived on this for four days in a row.

Ahh, that beer hit the spot. Let me slip a drink coaster under your glass while you tell us—on a scale of 1 to 10—as a writer are you a messy desker or tidy desker? (NB: 1 = “I am a neat nut case” and 10 = “What desk? Where? Is there a desk here somewhere?”)

LOL – every couple of days I am a tidy desker and then things deteriorate as it gets crowded with cosmetics (I always like to look  good while I am writing) unpaid bills and boxes of Fruit Loops.

The publican offers you free drinks all night if you will:

     Dance to Gangnam Style

     Sing John Denver’s ‘Take me Home Country Roads’ on the Karaoke machine

     Spend an hour washing dishes

Which do you choose?

I would gladly do all three. I can see the particular pleasure in each. I am the perfect guest.

Time to liven the place up. Got a buck? We can crank up the old jukebox in the corner. You get to pick three songs.

1. ‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme’ by Abba – the ultimate song of sexual desperation
2. ‘Rapture’ by Blondie – the worst rap ever. Never fails to please – something about eating Subarus.
3. ‘What’s Goin’ On?’ by Marvin Gaye – to reassure everyone that I am cool and smooth after all.

An author, an agent and a chicken walk into the bar… how do you know which one crossed the road?

The author, definitely – they could never afford a taxi to take them right to the door. The bus dropped them off four blocks away.

There’s a stapler on the bar. Tell me what it’s doing there.

To collect all my expenses claims. Which I will carefully file and discover six useless years later underneath an old copy of ‘Men’s Fitness’.

The pub is the heart of a small town and most locals would be lost without one. What are three things you’d be lost without?

1. Liniment – wherever I am in the world I head straight to the local herbalist to get     their patent mixture that cures everything – I am a terrible hypochondriac and always looking for the miracle cure.
2. Self-help books – I am always reading a dozen. I like to think I will one day do      everything listed in them and thereafter be incredibly successful. After I have read my back issues of ‘Men’s Fitness’.
3. Cologne – cheap or expensive, I don’t care. I just need to mask the smell of liniment. I love perfumes, and always have a couple of dozen bottles in various rooms around the house. I will pause in between hanging out the washing and taking leaves out of the gutter to douse myself in Calvin Klein’s latest. When I was a child my mother had an accident with a bottle of Charlie in the back of our car and I’m afraid I have been hooked on scents ever since. Oh, and my Aunty was an Avon lady. That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.

There are a few good prizes up for grabs in the bar jackpot. Do you have a lucky number?

Your lucky number is: 1111 or 888 – of course

Walter, here’s a beer coaster. Take a minute to jot down the blurb for your book.

Join intrepid traveller, Walter Mason – author of Destination Saigon – on a colourful adventure to one of the world’s hottest new destinations. Meet writers, drag queens  and monks as he traverses this extraordinarily beautiful country.

The ancient and mysterious ruins of Cambodia have long captured the imagination of visitors, more so now than ever before. In Destination Cambodia, Walter Mason charts an affectionate, intimate and deeply personal look at a Kingdom that has drawn him back again and again since his youth.
Whether he’s watching young monks recite the Buddha’s life stories, visiting shamans and fortune tellers, or discovering the darker alleys of Phnom Penh with a romantic novelist and a world-weary street hustler, Walter takes the reader straight to the heart of this famously unknowable country. As heat, dust and weariness take their toll, he remains alive to the charms, and even seductions, of a place that was once a byword for misery and human suffering.
Destination Cambodia takes us on a joyful and constantly fascinating literary journey in which Cambodia is vibrant and its people excited about the future while never denying their haunted past.

Last drinks, my friend! It’s been great.

I’m adding a link to Kirsten Krauth, Wild Colonial Girl where she did a great blog post on your  writing and books. (Go to Kirsten’s blog.) Kirsten will be here having a yarn with me soon with a great Christmas Giveaway.

Walter, before we go, tell us how we can find out more about you and your writing/books.

You can read about my latest book, Destination Cambodia, at Allen & Unwin:

My website is at: www.waltermason.com

On Twitter you can find me @walterm

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waltermasonauthor

My fabulous and slightly scandalous Tumblr (overweight cats, highbrow books and pics of tiramisu): http://waltermason.tumblr.com/

Oh, and I also run the Universal Heart Book Club with Stephanie Dowrick at: www.universalheartbookclub.com