MAL KING BIOGRAPHY

A graduate of University of Southern California (BA and Masters), I’ve won several cash prizes: Before The Last Leaf Falls, a memoir won $10,000 and first prize in the Christian Writers Guild non-fiction contest. The Rustling of a Wing, won the Rupert Hughes Fiction Award at the Maui Writer’s Conference ($1,000 cash prize), First-Place Fiction award at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference. And Rustling was a finalist in the Christian Writers $50,000 Guild First Novel competition. The judges concluded that the novel was “too earthy for the Christian market.” I’ve also received first-place cash awards from Writer's Digest and other publications ($1,000 awards). One piece won Story of the Year and a thousand pounds from World Wide Writers, Writer’s Forum (published in the United Kingdom).

I’m an old coot (ninety), a Korean War veteran, a book lover, and a great grandfather. In 1984, I retired as the chief investigator for the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office. My most interesting experience was the Ma Duncan Trial of the Century (so labeled in 1959). With a nod to Shakespeare, Newsweek Magazine began a piece about Elizabeth Ma Duncan hiring two men to murder Olga Duncan, her pregnant daughter-in-law:

The story out of Ventura, California was cast by the police in the mold of classic tragedy in modern dress. A story of the bitterest passion, of murder most foul, of the innocent slain. It was a triangle—but not of the modern kind: Here was a mother, a son, and a brand-new bride.

Convicted, Ma Duncan and the two hired killers made history in an unwanted way: the last triple execution in California (all on the same day).

Trial and other life experiences, reading thousands of books and literary journals, participating in a critique group, receiving feedback from contests, studying books and blogs about the writing craft, observing—all of these and more are helping me, I hope, get closer to my goal of crafting stories that involve the reader—providing experiences that evoke emotion. Probably the most helpful thing I’ve done is hire a book doctor-development editor to make recommendations on preparing The Rustling of a Wing for the market place.

My Aunt Melba and Uncle Angelo took these photos in 2013. I live in California, and she was the only person who knew my birthplace. Melba explained, “The shack had one drab room. The only color came from feed-sack fabric your mother fashioned into a curtain. Your daddy nailed a citrus box to the wall for dishes. No stove for heating or cooking. They cooked outside. Or ate raw fruit and vegetables. There were no screens for the doorways. In the summer, they either shut the doors, suffered in the trapped heat and stench, or opened the screenless doors and fought flies. No running water, so the only time they bathed without shivering was in summer when they filled the wash tub with creek water and let the sweltering sun warm it. 

There was no relief during the Great Depression. President Roosevelt’s speech in 1933 was inspirational but inaccurate. We had more than fear to fear: joblessness, hunger, freezing, and severe illness requiring medical attention with no money to pay for it.