Jason Schoonover Bio

Jason Schoonover was brought up on farms, villages, towns and cities in Saskatchewan, Canada, which is why he feels equally at home living in Bangkok and canoeing in the remote north of his homeland, one of his passions. Following university (Simon Fraser, English and History, 1970), he launched what became a multi-media career as a disk jockey, and expanded into writing, directing and producing in radio, TV, stage, newspapers and magazines, including a stint as a columnist. His largest stage production was writing, directing and producing Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s 80^th birthday party gala in 1975, an extravaganza involving over 300 performers and personnel. He invested everything in Saskatoon real estate.

 

Since 1977, he’s been gainfully unemployed and began traveling in earnest. On his first solo around the world, stringing travel as a photo-journalist to Canadian and U.S. dailies, he discovered a new and fascinating career in Asia—anthropological collecting for museums internationally. He moved to Bangkok in 1982. This exciting lifestyle led to the publication in 1988 of his first adventure novel, The Bangkok Collection, which became the Bantam international paperback bestseller Thai Gold the following the year. Coincidentally, protagonist Lee Rivers just happens to be an ethnological collector too, lives in Bangkok and also has a taste for Mekhong whisky-and-Coke and the bar life....

 

Due to a plummeting economic situation in Saskatchewan, he had to return in 1989 to save his floundering properties. He made this difficult choice despite being flown by Bantam to New York for a meeting with the president and editor-in-chief who were grooming him to be the next Cussler or Clavell. Saving his real estate and credit rating demanded his attention for some years and hampered his writing, but when his properties were solid and solvent again, he returned to the computer fulltime. Unfortunately, he’d lost his momentum. Fortunately Jason was still happy. Why not? He was free again to follow his dreams.

 

The non-fiction Westward from New Amsterdam was released in 2001; Opium Dream, with the very un-PC Lee Rivers again, was published in 2002; and The Manila Galleon in 2006. Jason’s adventure-thrillers are noteworthy because of their rich anthropological, archaeological and cultural backgrounds, something invariably commented on by reviewers.

 

In the meantime, Thai Gold was republished by Asia Books, Thailand, and as Nepal Gold by Pilgrims Books of Nepal and India. Thai Gold is also in development as a movie. In 2005 he was profiled in Jerry’s Hopkins’ Bangkok Babylon: The Real-Life Exploits of Bangkok’s Legendary Expatriates is often Stranger than Fiction.

 

His most recent book is Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives with the subtitle Today’s Adventurers Recall the Youthful Dreams Launching their Remarkable Lives. It contains the submissions of a Who’s Who of 120 international explorers with names like Buzz Aldrin, Bob Ballard, Leakey and Cousteau.

 

Jason splits his year between Thailand and Canada. You can guess which seasons he spends where. The Imperial Dragon Lady, Su Hattori, has kindly been enduring the unendurable since 1988.

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More Interviews...
Contemporary Authors Online
Jason Schoonover Interview by Jerry Hopkins
Far More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Jason Schoonover—the Bic Parker interview