Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Mark Morton (The Headmasters)!
Meet the Author: Mark Morton
Mark Morton, author of the award-winning novel The Headmasters is also the author of four nonfiction titles Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award); The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also written more than 50 columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time.
About the Book: The Headmasters
How do you learn from the past if there isn’t one?
Sixty years ago, something awful happened. Something that killed everyone except the people at Blue Ring. Something that caused the Headmasters to appear. But Maple doesn’t know what it was. Because talking about the past is forbidden. Everyone at Blue Ring has a Headmaster. They sink their sinewy coils into your skull and control you, using your body for backbreaking toil and your mind to communicate with each other. When someone dies, their Headmaster transfers to someone new. But so do the dead person’s memories, and if one of those memories surfaces in the new host’s mind, their brain breaks. That’s why talking about the past is forbidden. Maple hates this world where the past can’t exist and the future promises only more suffering. And she hates the Headmasters for making it that way. But she doesn’t know how to fight them – until memories start to surface in her mind from someone who long ago came close to defeating the Headmasters. But whose memories are they? Why aren’t they harming her? And how can she use them to defeat the Headmasters? Maple has to find the answers herself, unable to tell anyone what she’s experiencing or planning—not even Thorn, the young man she’s falling in love with. Thorn, who has some forbidden secrets of his own . . .
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~Author Chat~
YABC: What inspired you to write this book?
I’ve always loved stories that take place in dystopian environments, whether they are novels like The Hunger Games and 1984, or TV series like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, so I wanted to write the kind of dystopian novel that I’d have wanted to read as a young adult. To me, dystopias are compelling because they quickly reveal a person’s true character, pushing them towards becoming a hero or a villain. I also wanted to write a novel that focussed on resilience and hope. I think it must be very hard for a young person in our actual world not to feel discouraged and worried, when there are so many huge issues like climate change, global conflicts, pandemics, and the rapid change and impact of new technologies. So I wanted to write a book that showed that hope is possible, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, and that the most important trait we can have – apart from love for one another – is resilience.
YABC: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?
There’s a scene where a character named Ivy, who’s conspiring with the Headmasters, is pursuing Maple with the intention of killing her. It’s an exciting scene, because it takes place as the building around them is crumbling, but it’s also a scene in which we can see that Ivy is not merely “evil,” but rather is acting out of her own fear and her own need for certainty. In fact, Ivy is doing what she believes to be right. I think that makes her a compassionate character, but at the same time we don’t want her to harm Maple. I like creating that complexity of character.
YABC: Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
The most important thing about being a writer is that you have to write. There are days where I don’t feel like writing or where I wonder if a given writing project is any good, but I still need to sit down in front of the laptop and make words appear on the screen. A writer can’t just wait for inspiration to come along out of thin air – you have to be persistent, you have to keep at it, both when the writing comes easily and also when it’s a struggle. No doubt that’s true of almost anything that a person wants to excel in. To put it another way, “grit” is just as important as talent.
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
The cover of The Headmasters depicts a creature that looks like a plate-sized wood tick attached to the back of a young woman, and the cover as a whole has a creepy greenish tinge. This perfectly captures how I imagined the Headmasters: as disturbing, inscrutable aliens that make themselves part of us. I also like that we can’t see the face of the young woman – who I imagine is Maple – because it suggests how she herself isn’t yet aware of who she can become.
YABC: What are your favorite themes or tropes?
My favourite trope is characters in the process of discovering themselves and transcending what they perceive to be their limitations.
YABC: Do you have a playlist you listened to while writing?
I don’t listen to music when I write because I find it distracting, but I do like to have a bit of hubbub in the background. That’s why I like to write in coffee shops where the conversations of other people blur into a gentle wave of sound. Sometimes I also like to listen to playlists of “Lofi beats,” but I don’t think of that as music so much as just a rhythmic beat laid over some soothing white noise. When I’m not writing, I listen to a diverse range of music, from 1920s blues to 1990s grunge, and from Bob Dylan to Sabrina Carpenter.
YABC: What kind of animal would your main character be and why?
One of the main characters in The Headmasters actually is an animal – namely, a dog named Farley, though in fact he’s really a kind of “spirit guide,” who only interacts with Maple, the main character, when she enters the collective “mindscape” of the Headmasters. The Farley in the novel is based on one of my own dogs, who was also named Farley. After my wife and I adopted two older children, Farley was so important in helping our new kids adjust to our family – it was as if they were adopting him. The relationship that humans can have with dogs – a relationship that dates back tens of thousands of years – is one of the most important aspects of being human. As for Maple herself, I think of her more like a tree than an animal — specifically, as her name suggests, a maple tree. I gave her that name partly because the novel is set in a remote part of Canada, and Canada’s national tree is the maple. Second, maple trees are incredibly strong and resilient, and in the fall their leaves turn into explosions of color — reds, and oranges, and yellows. I see that as symbolic of Maple as a young woman: as she discovers who she is and her capabilities, she turns into a brilliant and powerful hero.
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
As a writer, I think my superpower is coming up with a good idea for a story, and then trusting that the story will reveal itself as I work on it. I see it as being kind of like driving on a highway in the fog: you know where you want to get to, but you can’t see more than 50 yards ahead, and yet you trust that the highway is there, even though you can’t yet see it.
Has The Headmasters received good reviews?
It’s got a 4.5 rating on Goodreads, so ordinary readers are really liking it. And here are some of my favourite reviews that it’s received:
“A new science fiction novel that feels like it’s already a classic… Morton’s The Headmastersinvites the reader into a dystopian future that is rife with traditional science fiction world building. His work brings to light the challenges of control and the puzzles that come with trying to navigate a future when the past is lost to memory. . . This well-paced young adult novel captures the readers’ attention right from the beginning, engaging them in epic storytelling and reminding them that there is a time when it’s important to stand up and fight for what you believe in.”— Arlene Barlin Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy Jurors, 2025 CCBC Book Awards
“Mark Morton’s The Headmasters is a brilliant science-fiction debut from one of Canada’s best-loved nonfiction writers. This compelling YA novel is a spot-on updating of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic The Puppet Masters for the new millennium, with intricate world-building, a great science-fiction puzzle, and — ironic for a novel about suppressed memories — a main character you’ll never forget. I loved it.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Downloaded
“A provocative and intelligent science fiction novel that challenges its readers to think about oppression and domination, what it means to truly resist, and what motivates one to fight against a tyrannical system even when the citizens don’t know that they are being tyrannized.” – LitPick (Five Star Book Review Award winner)
“Eminently readable and exciting . . . The Headmasters is a worthy companion to books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids . . . in contemplating humanity and freedom in a Canadian context.”— Bill Rambo, The Winnipeg Free Press
YABC: What’s up next for you?
I’ve completed another novel called The Child I Once Was that takes place in the same world as The Headmasters, but its darker in tone and it’s intended for adults rather than young adults. I see it as kind of similar to Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or The Road by Cormac McCarthy. And I’ve also started to work on another novel that takes place just after the First World War and is about a golem (that is, a human-like creature made of mud) and an illusionist who runs in the same circles as Harry Houdini.
Title: The Headmasters
Author: Mark Morton
Release Date: 2024
Publisher: Shadowpaw Press
Genre: Science Fiction
Age Range: Young Adult (12+)
