Countdown to 7th August: Author Interview with Jeff Norton (Author of Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie)

It's great to be featuring an interview with Jeff Norton today, as part of the Countdown to 7th August blog tour. However, to kick things off I have an extra special treat for you - a short video of Jeff reading the prologue of his hilarious new book, Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie. The video was taken when Jeff took part in the Wonder of Words Young People's Literary Festival last month.

And now on to the interview:

Firstly, how would you describe your book Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie to a potential reader?

It’s the funny, sometimes awkward, true story of a twelve-year-old boy called Adam Meltzer who has early-onset OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) who dies and comes back as a zombie. It’s a coming of age story about learning how to be comfortable in your own skin…even if it’s decomposing.

What was the original inspiration behind the story?

The original inspiration was literally feeling like a (sleepless) zombie when my first son was born.  It made me wonder what it’d be like to actually be a zombie. I explored the idea in a short film I made about a grown-up zombie trying to get his old life back (you can see it here: https://vimeo.com/32102311) and then I kept thinking about the unfair life of a zombie, and then started to imagine how bad it’d be if you were undead in middle school. Life’s hard at twelve with friends, parents, puberty, and teachers…imagine being among the walking dead too!

I loved your main characters in Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie.  Can you tell us a little more about Adam, Ernesto and Corina?

Thank you! What I love about them is that they are all better people/monsters with their friendship.  Adam is a neurotic worrywart, fearful of germs and obsessed with safety and hygiene.  But he’s got an inner confidence, and over the course of the book, he learns how to accept what he’s become.

Corina is a vegan vampire who’s not got a very supportive home life. She’s cold and prickly on the outside, but that’s mostly because nobody has taught her how to be kind….until she meets Adam and Ernesto.

Ernesto, who goes by Nesto, is a very messy Chupacabra who’d rather be a werewolf. He lives with a big family in the house behind Adam’s house and since he’s always the runt of every group he’s in, had never really had a group of friends.  

Exactly what is a Chupacabra?

No one really knows, but it’s a new legend that began in Puerto Rico in the mid nineties. People began reporting sightings of a lizard-like creature, the size of a large dog, destroying goats and the myth spread to Mexico where the creature is blamed for eating cattle.  In the book, Ernesto’s family (who are Mexican) moved from the countryside because the farmers were arming themselves against Ernesto’s midnight feasts.

How did you find the writing process compared with when you were writing the MetaWars books?

Mostly it was a relief. MetaWars, as you know, is utterly relentless in its intensity so I needed to so something funny.  I wrote most of this book in various coffee shops (including in my childhood hometown) and would often break into unstoppable laughter while writing it. I’m pretty sure people around me thought I was crazy…which I suppose you have to be to write about an OCD zombie. So maybe they’re right?

What do you like most about writing for young people?

It’s a real honour and a total privilege to write for people who are still discovering the world.  I was such a reluctant reader as a boy that I love creating stories that I hope will turn young people into life long readers. 

Do you have a favourite zombie movie?

That’s a hard one!  While not technically zombies, I think Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later is a master class in reinventing the genre.  I also have a real soft spot for Zombieland because of its deadpan comedy.

Do you have a survival plan for when the zombie apocalypse arrives? 

I don’t reckon my chances are very good, but I do have a stash of zombie makeup so I think I’ll first make up myself and my family and zombies and try to blend in. The key will be not to leave the house in case zombie hunters mistake us for the real thing. That’d be awkward.

When said zombie apocalypse arrives you can have one person, real or fictional, as your survival partner. Who would you choose?

Doc Brown, obvs. I’d get into the DeLorean with him and zip back to before the outbreak and stop it.

If you could pose one question to any writer, living or deceased, who would the writer be and what question would you ask?

You mean beyond asking JK Rowling to reveal that she’s the actual author of Memoirs Of A Neurotic Zombie using Jeff Norton as a pen name, I’d love to sit down with F. Scott Fitzgerald and ask about his opinion on the world today and how much it’s the same or different as the 1920s.

If you were to host a dinner party for any three people (alive or from the past), who would those three people be? 

These people from the past, would they be in decrepit corpse mode or ghost mode? If the former, I’d only go with alive folks because I think I’d lose my appetite with living corpses around the dinner table. I think they’d leak all over the floor too, and I have a really nice hardwood floor that I’d like to keep bile free.  

Anyway, assuming ghost mode: FDR, Benjamin Franklin, and my granny.

Assuming corpse mode, and thus going for living dinner guests: J.J.Abrams, Joss Whedon, and my wife, Sidonie.

And if you were allowed to invite a few fictional characters as well?

Gatsby, Yoda, Katniss (but she’d have to leave her weapons at the door). Brian Flanagan on bar (Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail).  I’d ask Robocop to do security. 

Is there anything else you would like to say to readers of The Book Zone?

I hope you’re losing yourself in a good book this summer!  Happy reading!

Oh, and there’s a brand new Adam Meltzer website launching called www.adammeltzer.com.  Check it out.

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Huge thanks to Jeff for taking the time to answer my questions.

Jeff Norton’s Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie publishes 7th of August from Faber.  Jeff is on the web at www.jeffnorton.com and tweeting as @thejeffnorton.

Review: Soul Shadows, and Interview with the Author, Alex Woolf

Estelle’s therapist has prescribed her a dose of solitude. So she’s staying in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, trying to come to terms with her traumatic past. But there’s more going on in the quiet nearby woods than she knows.

An army of unnatural shadows lurks among the trees. Unlike those that harmlessly follow our footsteps, these shadows can rise up, they can touch … and they can kill.

Estelle and her old friend Sandor must battle this shape-shifting army and the sinister forces that have called them into being. But how can you defeat your enemies when you’re afraid of your own shadow?

Soul Shadows by Alex Woolf is one of those book that sort of took me by surprise, in that I thought it was going to be one thing, and it turned out to be something rather different. Based on the press release I received from the lovely people at Curious Fox, I thought this was going to be a fairly traditional ghost/supernatural story, and I was expecting a steady build-up to the horror, over a period of several chapters, as we meet the main character, he/she finds themselves in a potential spooky situation (haunted house, sinister village, deserted woodland), something's lurking in the dark, etc. What I got was a fast-paced horror story where the action kicks in before the end of the first chapter and doesn't relent until the final page.

18-year-old Estelle has a history of mental health problems, stemming from an incident of severe psychological abuse carried out by her mother when she was much younger. Since then she has tried to kill herself several times, and it is only though the help of her therapist, Dr Kirby, that she has finally turned a corner. As the next step in her therapy, Kirby has recommended that she spends a week on her own in his remote country cottage. However, as Estelle quickly discovers, she is most definitely not alone and the sinister shadows she can't be sure are real are only the beginning of a nightmare battle for survival.

I don't want to give too much away about the plot, but I will say that it covers themes of mental illness, identity and what makes someone human, and also the ethics of science. It is guaranteed to have the reader questioning their own opinions on these topics, as the actions of some of the characters will have you wondering who the greatest monsters are: the soul shadows of the story's title or the scientists who created them.

Soul Shadows differs in writing style from a large number of the YA horror books I have read. It took me a while to get used to it, as I felt that it lacked a natural flow at times, and the immediate jump into the action was also something that jarred a little with me. However, after I had read a couple of chapters I did a little research and discovered that this book was not written in the traditional manner. It first saw the light of day on Fiction Express, a website that gives young people the chance to influence a story as it is being written by a professional author. In simple terms, the author writes a chapter a week, and at the end of each chapter the Fiction Express readers are offered a series of options as to how they would like the story to continue. This innovative method of writing a book not only explained the occasional lack of flow in the plot, but also the non-stop, breath-taking pace of the story.

Soul Shadows has many genuinely scary moments, but at times it is the moral issues that are more terrifying. If you prefer your horror to be more action and less slow-burning suspense then this is the book for you.

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Having enjoyed the book I am now really pleased to welcome it's author to The Book Zone to answer some questions for us:

How did you get the idea for Soul Shadows?

The starting point was a piece of dialogue I wrote between two people, each of them crouched on either side of a door. One of them was very scared, telling the other one not to open the door, whatever happens. I then had to decide what was out there that was making this character so scared. I realised that the scariest thing that I could possibly imagine was my own shadow coming alive. I’ve no idea where this idea came from – but I’ve always been fairly spooked by shadows. It may have something to do with the fact that I have unreliable peripheral vision. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll see a dark thing suddenly move. I turn and all I can see there is my shadow behaving as a shadow should. But one day it may happen that I’ll turn more quickly than usual, and I’ll see something…

Where is the story set?

It’s set in the fictional English county of Wintershire, which is a deliberately bland, undramatic, fairly flat sort of everyplace – possibly based on Bedfordshire. I wanted to give it an ordinary setting to make the events, when they start happening, seem more startling. The story begins in an isolated cottage near a spooky wood. The wood becomes a major setting for the story, as does the nearby village of Delhaven, which turns out to be under the control of a sinister scientific establishment called the Facility.

Who are the main characters? Are they based on anyone you know?

The main characters are Estelle and Sandor. Estelle is an 18-year-old girl who suffered a psychological trauma when she was 14 (her mother locked her in an attic for 12 weeks), and has been in and out of institutions ever since. She’s been sent to the isolated cottage as a form of exposure therapy to get over her fear of being alone. Sandor is a 21-year-old soldier and childhood friend of Estelle’s. At the start of the novel he’s wrestling with his own demons following a tough tour of duty in Afghanistan in which he saw a close friend die. In the course of the novel, both Estelle and Sandor are forced to confront their deepest fears of loneliness and loss. They have to learn to relate to each other in a different way, now they’re no longer children, and a mutual attraction starts to form. Neither character is based on anyone I know. However, I once had to care for a close friend suffering from mental illness, and I’m sure that some of that experience played into my creation of Estelle.

Did any books or films inspire you when writing the story?

A major theme of the book is the dangers of irresponsible, uncontrolled science, and as such my book takes its place in a venerable tradition within horror and science fiction, from Frankenstein to Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. In creating a scientific basis for the shadows, I was influenced by the inventive pseudoscience of TV shows such as Doctor Who and Primeval, and the scary, claustrophobic scene in the Facility (a high-tech research establishment in the woods) was partly inspired by the film Alien. 

What writing techniques did you use in the scary scenes?

First of all, I tried to imagine myself in the scene, and attempted to express, moment by moment, even second by second, how I would feel if it was happening to me. I used short sentences, and slowed the action right down, drawing out the tension. I was careful not to over-describe the monsters – just giving hints of their horribleness and leaving readers to imagine the detail for themselves. After writing my initial draft I went over it several times, ruthlessly hacking away anything extraneous, so I was left with something as lean and mean and hopefully scary as possible.

Do you have a favourite line or scene from the book?

There are a few, most of which I can’t mention here as they’re plot spoilers. I quite like this description of Estelle’s first meeting with her shadow:

Estelle opened her mouth to scream, and the girl-thing seemed to copy her, except that its mouth went on growing and growing, like a distortion in a nauseating hall of mirrors. Its shiny beetle-black eyes gazed hungrily back at her. Saliva dripped from needle-like teeth, as fresh soil from the forest floor began to show between the cracks in its cheeks.

Was it always called Soul Shadows or how did you think of the title?

It began life as a short story called Shadow of Death. Not long after I’d written this, I was approached by a publisher of interactive novels, Fiction Express, to write a novel for teenagers. I immediately suggested an expanded version of ‘Shadow of Death’. I explained the concept to Paul Humphreys, MD of Fiction Express, and he loved it. He particularly liked the name I’d given my monsters – soul shadows – and he said that might make a good title for the story.

Describe Soul Shadows in three words.

Shadows come alive.

What is the most scary thing that’s happened to you?

It was either the time I found myself alone about fifteen feet from a barracuda while snorkelling off the Florida Keys, or else the time I was scaling a rock face in a gorge in the South of France and suddenly realised I couldn’t find a way up or down, or the time I saw a greenish glow in the darkness of a room I’d wandered into by accident while staying in a country house in Surrey.

What is your favourite scary book and movie?

Great question! Let me think! Sorry, I simply can’t limit this to one of each. Favourite scary books are Stephen King’s It, The Shining, Night Shift and Carrie; Clive Barker’s Books of Blood and Weaveworld; Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror; Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes; Peter Benchley’s Jaws; and the short stories of M R James. Favourite scary movies are Psycho; Night of the Living Dead; Halloween; Friday the 13th; Nightmare on Elm Street; The Exorcist; The Omen; Alien; The Ring; The Vanishing.

What was your favourite book as a child?

The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis

If you could have dinner with any authors, past or present, who would you choose?

I’d probably choose Stephen King, Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Kazuo Ishiguro and J D Salinger.

If you weren’t an author what would you be?

Something creative, like a sculptor or choreographer or a designer of avant-garde iced buns. However, I’d probably avoid a career in shadow puppetry, for obvious reasons.

How do you write? (morning/evening, how many hours, in what room/location, on computer or wth pen etc?

I love writing in the early mornings, fuelled by plenty of tea. I always write on computer these days, and I work from a room in my house. I generally take quite a long lunch break, then work until around six or my kids demand my attention – whichever comes sooner.

If people like the book and want to get in touch or find out more about you, how do they do that?

They can contact me through my publishers, Curious Fox, or via my website: http://alexwoolf.co.uk

Interview with Oisin McGann, author of Rat Runners (Blog Tour)

At the beginning of this year I made the decision to pull back from taking part in the majority of blog tours that were offered to me. I mentioned this briefly in the introduction to the piece that Barry Hutchison wrote for me yesterday, and I said I would explain a little more today. I have a number of reasons for doing this. Firstly, I'm really not sure they are worth doing. I look at the hits my posts get, and author interviews and  outside of blog tours and my reviews of their books seem to be far more popular with my readers. Secondly, sometimes authors are visiting a huge number of blogs in these tours, and expecting them to produce high quality, original pieces for every blog is a huge ask. In a few of the tours I have participated in in the past I have almost felt disappointed with the copy I have been sent when I compare it with the work that author normally produces. And another, albeit less significant reason, is that when I visit other blogs I really hate seeing a side bar rammed full of blog tour banners.

If I look back through the blog tours I have participated in, author interviews are by far the most popular items (although there are a number of guest posts that have been incredibly well received). I would love to be able to say I would do a Q&A for every blog tour invitation I receive, but I will only do this for books I have read, and more often than not I simply do not have the time to guarantee a read of a book before the tour is scheduled to take place. However, occasionally a book will come along that I will TOTALLY LOVE, and if this coincides with a blog tour then I am more than happy to take part, and thus I have left that door slightly open.

One such book is Rat Runners by Oisin McGann. I absolutely raced through it, and so did not hesitate at all to accept Random House's kind invitation to take part in the tour by interviewing Oisin.

Firstly, how would you describe your book Rat Runners to a potential reader?


I tend to describe it as a crime story set in a near-future surveillance state. The idea is that these young criminals, the rat-runners, can do a lot of things that adults can’t, because of the massive surveillance system you become part of once you turn sixteen. When four of these rat-runners are hired by a powerful psycho gangster to find a case belonging to a murdered scientist, it doesn’t take them long to realise they’re involved in a very dangerous game played by some very powerful people. The kids are smart, tough and very fast on their feet, but way out of their depth.

What was the original inspiration behind the Rat Runners story?

It started with a very simple idea: What if, instead of all these surveillance cameras we see around us every day, there are masked, uniformed figures watching us instead? Because that’s what’s actually happening, when you think about it. You’d suddenly get a lot more paranoid. I then cranked it up, so they don’t just watch you, they can examine you with X-rays and thermographic sensors, highly sensitive mikes and chemical analyzers. And there are plenty of other forms of surveillance out in the streets and online too. Then imagine that kids can’t be tracked until they were sixteen, so a lot of kids end up being used by criminals for certain types of jobs. Imagine the types of kids they’d be. And they still have to avoid the surveillance, so you have an excellent means giving those kids a real advantage over a lot of adults. You also keep the action inventive by stopping villains from carrying guns and obvious knives – because they can be spotted by X-ray cameras – and just moving from place to place can become an action scene. Then I decided to make this the whole surveillance thing the setting for the story, rather than having it as the problem to be solved. The characters aren’t trying to bring down the system, they’re just living and working within it.

I loved your main characters in Rat Runners. Can you tell my blog readers a little more about Nimmo, Scope, Mannikin and FX?

They’re very different from each other, with a variety of motives and goals, and different ways of doing things, and this allowed me to have them sparking off each other throughout the story. Nimmo is the master thief, a loner with trust issues, whose first concern is always survival, but who has a code of sorts. He has few friends, but is loyal to those he has. Manikin is a con-artist and a frustrated actor. A student of human nature, but also prickly to deal with, she was being raised for a life in film before her parents died and the performer ended up living off her wits with her younger brother FX in the criminal world instead, putting her skills as an actor to use, changing her appearance and personality at will. FX is a coffee-addicted fidget and an expert hacker and tech-head. He’s a bit of an online anarchist too, and though he lets himself be pushed around by his big sister, he’s a genius when it comes to anything digital or electronic and runs most of the things in their hideout in Brill Alley. Scope is also a child prodigy, with a passion for science and an eye for detail that borders on obsessive-compulsive. She makes a living faking forensic evidence for a gangster. She seems the most innocent of the rat-runners, but has lived for too long in the control of that monstrous gangster to have any illusions of the criminal world.

What kind of research did you do when writing Rat Runners?

There were all sorts of things I needed to cover, from some of the different types of confidence trick to police procedures, from forensics to London’s geography, from hacking to action for social justice – and a lot about surveillance techniques. But I’d read a lot about this kind of stuff anyway, as I’m interested in it, and I’d written a darker, more serious book called Strangled Silence a few years back about how information is controlled and distorted, which had a lot of common elements. Most of what went into Rat Runners was just material I’d picked up along the way, rather than finding it specifically for the story. That said, I could rarely go more than a few pages without checking something. It’s part of the fun of writing, getting to read about stuff for work that you’d do anyway.

Rat Runners is full of all kinds of tech. How much of it is real and how much of it was a product of your imagination?

Actually, the vast majority of it is real, although I did enhance it in places, such as fashion for implants and the Safe-Guards’ ability to use X-ray cameras on the move. Apart from the brundleseed – which is based loosely on a theory, but nothing that actually exists yet – just about all the technology I mention is already in use. In fact, I actually had to tone it down in places, as the reality of surveillance is so overwhelming, I could spend the whole book trying to cover all the details. But that wouldn’t make a good novel – too much description really slows down the pace of a story. And it’d probably make my readers paranoid.

Although you are writing about a fictional future police state, is the book intended to be a commentary on the present levels of surveillance in the UK?

I suppose it’s more about asking questions than any deliberate kind of commentary. I’ve found when I’ve tried to make statements or try and explain things with a story, the writing can get very preachy, which is never good, and also, I’m just not that smart that I can figure it all out. But I do have questions. Every story is a thought process – my mind is in among those words, mulling it all over, but the first aim is always to produce a thrilling plotline. If the reader keeps thinking about stuff in the book after they’ve finished reading and put it down, that’s a bonus. Certainly, I think we should be asking ourselves how much surveillance we want in our lives, and how much of our privacy we’ve already surrendered to people we don’t know and shouldn’t trust.

You produce small illustrations for all of the chapter headings in Rat Runners. How did this come about? Could you tell us something about the process you go through when creating these?

This is something I do with all my novels. Since I was a kid, I’ve had the conviction that stories need pictures, although I fully accept that novels can work just fine without them. I just really like pictures too. The chapter icons are a way of making the inside of the book look distinctive, while also showing things that might be hard to describe, or simply add an extra feature to the narrative. And, to be honest, it’s a good excuse to draw pictures. I tend to draw them after the writing’s done. I pick the things I’m going to draw out of each chapter during the first proper read-through, and do the final illustrations towards the end of the editing process. The ones for Rat Runners were drawn in pencil first, then inked with an isograph pen and a brush. You can see more about the process on a blog post I put a while back, here: http://www.oisinmcgann.com/blog/?p=3328

Rat Runners works as a standalone story. Are you planning to write any more books featuring Nimmo, Scope, Mannikin and FX?

Absolutely, I’ve outlines for two other books so far. I’ve also done a short prequel, a novella entitled The Eyes Behind Glass, that’ll be published as a free ebook, and possibly in episodes online.

Who are your greatest literary influences?

Where do I start – there are so many! Certainly, when I was young, there was Richard Scarry, Dr Seuss, and Enid Blyton, then Roald Dahl, CS Lewis, Willard Price and then Tolkien. I wanted stories about monsters and detectives, soldiers and spies, nastiness and humour, cool vehicles and chases and fights and thrills. I loved Jules Verne, who was just so far ahead of his time, classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Watership Down and Masterman Ready, and I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but as I got older, Stephen King was probably my biggest influence. He isn’t just a horror writer, he’s a fantastic writer of any kind of story. There were comics writers like Pat Mills, Frank Miller and Alan Moore. I read westerns by Louis L’Amour, Len Deighton’s war stories and cold war thrillers by the likes of Craig Thomas, John le Carré and Tom Clancy. Later influences would include writers like Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Neil Stephenson and Ernest Hemingway. Nowadays, I like Iain Banks, China Mieville, Chuck Palahniuk, George MacDonald Fraser, Lee Child and Terry Pratchett among many others.

The books you have written include elements of fantasy, science fiction and crime thriller. Are you a fan of all of these genres as a reader?

Yes, though I like to read all sorts of things, and I’ll try anything once.

Why did you decide to write for the Young Adult market?

A writer wants to have an effect on their reader, and the writers who had the greatest effect on me were those I read in the first few years of reading novels, when I was able to understand complicated plots and the difficult issues a character could be faced with, but my imagination was still free – I wasn’t worried about tax, or politics and I wasn’t watching the news. I wanted to do for other people what those writers did for me. I just that would be the biggest buzz, and it is! There is also one major advantage in writing for young adults, and that is you don’t get pigeon-holed. If I write a crime thriller, a science fiction story, a fantasy story, a historical drama and a horror, they’ll all get shelved together. If I were writing for adults, they’d all be put in different sections, on different shelves. And besides, I consider a young adult book to be a story both young and adult readers can enjoy.

Which books/authors did you read as a child/teenager? How do you think they compare with the children’s/YA books available today?

I’ve covered most of those in my answer about my influences, but back then, there were no ‘Young Adult’ books really. You went straight from Enid Blyton, Willard Price or The Hardy Boys to adult books. Really, the only difference between a lot of YA books and adult books of the same genre now is that the YA book has to have a young person as the main character, although I think that has more to do with what grown-ups think kids want. When I was young, I didn’t really care what age the characters were. Actually, I wanted to read about adults a lot of the time, not kids. So in Rat Runners, the kids live as adults, taking care of themselves because that’s the world they’ve found themselves in.

If you could pose one question to any writer, living or deceased, who would the writer be and what question would you ask?

I suppose it would have to be my dad, who wrote a lot of non-fiction. He died back when I was in college. I think I’d just like to have a chat about books, now that I’ve gone from being the kid who filled copybooks (exercise books) with stories and pictures, to doing it for a living. That’d be a cool conversation to have.

Thank you for your time Oisin. Is there anything else you would like to say to readers of The Book Zone?

Just that it doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you’re reading what interests you, excites you, whatever floats your boat. It’s not the format you read the words in, it’s how it sets your imagination playing, and the experience it creates in your head. Reading is just the means to the end – it’s what enables the DVD player in your head to turn books into movies. I hope you read Rat Runners, and I hope you enjoy it.

~~~

Huge thanks to Oisin for taking the time to answer my questions, and I am so glad I used my 'no blog tour get out clause' to host this Q&A. Take it from me, Rat Runners is a superb, fast-paced hi-tech crime thriller set in an all-to-believable future Britain. Rat Runners was published at the beginning of March, and you can continue your journey with Oisin on this blog tour tomorrow at Book Passion For Life.

Interview with Anthony Horowitz (author of some of the best books ever written for kids)

I really cannot think of the right words to describe how happy and honoured I am feeling right now to be hosting a Q&A with the legend that is Anthony Horowitz. I have been reading Anthony's books for as long as I have been teaching (and that feels like a lifetime sometimes), and when I started The Book Zone I never dreamed that the likes of Anthony Horowitz and Rick Riordan would be answering questions that I had sent them. Oblivion, the final book in The Power of Five series, was released yesterday and that's about all I think I need to say as an introduction:

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Hello Mr Horowitz. Welcome to The Book Zone (For Boys) and thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions for us. Congratulations on the publication of Oblivion – I know there are many, many people who have been waiting for this final instalment to The Power of Five series, and having read it, I thought it was a fantastic finale to the series.

Many readers of The Book Zone will not know that The Power of Five series first started back in 1983 as the Pentagram series. How does it feel to be saying goodbye to characters that you created so many years ago?

It's a relief! First of all I wrote the series a long time ago and then I completely re-wrote it. But the fifth and final book took ages to come and I rather fear there are children who have grown up waiting for it. I always knew OBLIVION would be a large, epic and (for me but hopefully not for the reader) an exhausting one. I'm just delighted it’s over and it’s worked out so well.

I read somewhere that you feel Oblivion to be the best book you have written. What is it about Oblivion that makes it so special for you?

Partly, it’s the characters. I think Pedro, the Peruvian street urchin, and Scott, the American twin who sells out and goes bad are two of the most interesting and well-drawn characters I've ever created. Partly it’s the amount of action I've managed to pack into the book which takes place all over the world with volcano eruptions, drug lords, slave markets, battles on the ice etc, etc. But above all, I think the book is my most personal. It has something – vaguely – to say. That may not matter to you but it matters to me.

How much of the future world you depict in Oblivion is based on current real life events and concerns? How much research did you need to do to create such a bleak future for Planet Earth?

I hope it isn't too bleak although I’d agree that nothing too cheerful seems to be happening. A lot of the book came out of the newspapers and the sense we have that things aren't going too well. The banks are collapsing. The weather is doing weird things. There's growing tension in the Middle East. Even so, Oblivion is meant to be an optimistic book. It's about the next generation saving the world – and let’s hope that happens in real life.

I watched the video of you in Antarctica and I believe it is well known that you like to visit the locations that you feature in your books. Do you have a favourite location from this series?

It would be hard to beat Antarctica, the last great wilderness on the planet. The ice was spectacular and the light – even at midnight (the sun never set) unforgettable. I saw hundreds of penguins, whales and wild birds although I'm afraid they didn't make it into the novel. But the glaciers and the ice-bergs with their uncanny, blue luminescence certainly inspired the last section.

Everyone loves a villain – do you have a favourite one from The Power of Five series? What do you think it is about great villains that readers love so much?

Jonas Mortlake is my favourite villain because he’s mean and disgusting without being all-powerful. He’s not like a James Bond villain with plans to conquer the world. He’s much more interested in his own survival. What makes him work, I think, is that he’s inspired by a real person, drawn from the news – but obviously I can’t say who without being sued. Maybe that’s what makes a good villain. You have to believe in them.

You have stated in several interviews that your next project is the story featuring Yassen Gregorovich. Is there anything else you can tell us about Yassen at the moment? Will you be writing it for a new young audience, or for the legions of older readers who grew up reading your Alex Rider books?

I never quite know who I'm writing my books for. I hope adults as well as children will find their way to Oblivion. Yassen (I'm searching for a new title) will be a stand-alone book. You won’t have to have read the whole Alex Rider series – but at the same time I’d guess that people who do know the books will enjoy it more than those who don’t. I plan to start writing it in November.

Do you have any other projects planned that you can tell us about, either for teens or adults? Is there any chance you might write another Sherlock Holmes book?

Right now we’re filming a new series of Foyle’s War which will air in 2013. I’m also working on the sequel to Tintin for Peter Jackson. After Yassen, I’m going to write a sort of sequel to “The House of Silk” but this one won’t feature Holmes or Watson although other characters from Conan Doyle will appear. It is set immediately after the death of Moriarty and the disappearance of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls and actually opens in an Austrian morgue.

On The Book Zone I run an occasional feature titled My Life That Books Built. A number of authors have told readers of The Book Zone about the book(s) they read when they were younger that helped mould them into the reader and/or writer they are today. Are there any such books from your childhood?

I often talk about Tintin being an early influence. He was a writer and has such colourful adventures. Likewise, Willard Price’s Adventure series was a constant joy when I was growing up. And then there was Ian Fleming and James Bond…

Thank you again for joining us here on The Book Zone, and for providing so many readers with so many hours of reading pleasure.

And thank you for your interesting questions.

*** Interview with Tim Bowler

Yesterday I posted a review of the first book in the reissued Blade series by Tim Bowler. Today, as promised, we are joined by Tim who very kindly agreed to answer some questions for readers of The Book Zone.

Hi Tim. Welcome to The Book Zone and thank you for taking the time to answer these questions for us. First up: how would you describe the Blade books to someone discovering them for the first time?

The series is an urban thriller about a fourteen-year-old boy nicknamed Blade and his battle to find redemption for the things he has done in the past. He has a terrifying skill with a knife and he has used this weapon to devastating effect, but he is a victim of the hideous circumstances in which he grew up, and by the time we meet him at the beginning of the story, he is on the run with his enemies closing in. The series highlights his brilliant gifts of survival but also his vulnerability as an individual as he fights against the odds and struggles with his awakening conscience.

What was the original inspiration for the Blade books?

There were several things that inspired the Blade series. Firstly, I have always had a horror of knives as weapons and while I find them frightening in any context, I am particularly horrified by the thought of young people carrying and using them. Secondly, I wanted to know whether someone who has committed the terrible acts of violence that Blade has can possibly come back from that and even have a future. Thirdly, I remember driving through a town in Devon in the 1980s and finding myself at a pedestrian crossing with the light on green and wondering why the car in front of me hadn't started to move forward. When I looked more closely, I saw that a boy of about seven had placed himself on the pedestrian crossing right in front of this other car and was jeering at the driver and daring him to drive on, which of course he couldn't and didn't. Car horns started going off behind me and eventually, when the boy had had his fun and made his point, he sidled over to the pavement with a triumphant grin on his face and 'allowed' the traffic to move on. I forgot about this boy for over twenty years and it was only when I'd written the first scene of Blade, where the seven-year-old Blade is in trouble with the police for holding up traffic at a pedestrian crossing, that I recognised where he had come from.

Blade is a great protagonist. Can you tell us a little more about him?

He's complex, he's dangerous, he's full of contradictions, he's street smart, he's bright, he loves books, he has an inquiring mind, he's inventive with words, he's likable, he's courageous. He's also deeply damaged. He's been damaged since the day he was born and it wasn't till he was ten that he started to learn to love and to trust. But by then it was too late and when he fled from his enemies at the age of eleven to go to ground in a new city, he sealed his mind against the possibility of ever loving or trusting again. But he didn't seal it tightly enough.

When the Blade books arrived at the school library a few years ago my librarian was a little hesitant about putting them on the shelves because of their focus on knife crime. I managed to persuade her that they were fine for our students. Have parents, teachers or librarians expressed similar concerns to you? What would your answer be?

One librarian did say to me that she was worried the series might glamorise knives for young people, but she hadn't read the books. I suggested that she first of all read the books for herself, and then find me one paragraph, one sentence even, that glorifies knives or suggests they're a good thing. Within just a few pages of the first book, we realise that this boy has a life nobody would want, and things only get harder for him as the story progresses. Far from portraying the romanticised life of some devil-may-care teen buccaneer with swashbuckling knife skills, the story shows a boy haunted by fear and guilt and perpetually on the edge of death, a boy fighting not just to save his own life but to believe in the point of that life. Blade is not a preachy story but it is a deeply moral one and I fail to see how an urban odyssey of this kind with sympathetic character portrayals and fast-moving action can possibly damage student readers, provided they are willing to embrace its issues in a mature way.

I have loved reading books ever since I was a child. Were you like this when you were younger or were you a reluctant reader? Who encouraged you to read when you were younger?

I'm just like you: an avid reader. I started at the age of five and never stopped. I just dived into reading. The first story I read was a sea story (Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain by Edward Ardizzone) and I've been passionate about sea stories ever since: Arthur Ransome, C.S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian, Robert Louis Stevenson etc. I lapped them all up. I also loved Tintin books, which I read in French, and thriller writers – too many to name – and then in my late teens I started moving towards poetry too. Since my twenties I've read pretty much anything that interests me – fiction of all kinds, poetry, non-fiction, e.g. biographies, history, history of music, diaries, letters, philosophy etc.

Is there anything else you would like to say to readers of this blog?

Just that it's been a real pleasure talking to you and to wish you all well. Thanks for your interest in Blade.

~~~

Huge thanks to Tim for taking the time to answer these questions, especially as I know he has been very busy recently. If you have not yet discovered the Blade series then the books are perfect for teens who love realistic, gritty thrillers. You can find out more about Tim and his many books at his website http://www.timbowler.co.uk/ 

OLYMPIAN WEEK Blog Tour Day 1 - Interview with Rick Riordan

Photo of Rick Riordan by Marty Umans

Wow... I am sort of lost for words right this moment. When I started this blog my intention was to try to share my knowledge of boy-friendly books with a hope that one or two parents may find something I wrote useful in helping their sons to develop an interest in reading. At no point did I think, less than two years on, that I would be hosting a Q&A with one of my writing heroes, and one of the most famous author of children's books in the world. Imagine my surprise and complete excitement when I received an email from just so for Puffin Books asking if I would be interested in taking part in a Rick Riordan blog tour. I was actually supposed to be taking minutes in a meeting at work and only god knows what was discussed for the next few minutes as my mind was suddenly elsewhere!

Today is Day One of Rick's Olympian Week Blog Tour, where he will be visiting seven UK blogs in order to celebrate the return of Percy Jackson (how great does that sounds PJ fans?) in the new Heroes of Olympus book, titled The Son of Neptune. Each day we will be honouring a different Greek god, and I chose Ares for The Book Zone. Let's face it - who else would be the most apt for this boy blog than the God of War himself. I have always loved the way that Rick portrayed Ares as a leather-clad biker complete with Harley Davidson, in the Percy Jackson books and even though he was often out to ruin things for Percy and his friends I couldn't help but look forward to any new appearance of his character.

Since I started The Book Zone I have received quite a number of emails from parents asking for advice regarding their son/daughter as he/she has ADHD and/or dyslexia. Knowing that Rick first wrote Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief for his son Haley who has both of these conditions I really wanted to tap into his expert knowledge for this Q&A. My huge thanks go to Rick for taking the time to answer my questions, and readers please don't shoot off straight after the interview as I have news about a great competition that is being run at the moment.

BZ: Rick, thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions for us. Your books are great at engaging reluctant readers. Was this something you were consciously trying to achieve as you wrote the original Percy Jackson series?

RR: The story was originally for my dyslexic son, who was very much a reluctant reader, so yes, it was a conscious decision. My years of teaching definitely helped me craft the stories, too. I always imagine reading the books to my own classroom. I try to keep the story moving, inject plenty or humor and action, and keep things relevant for modern kids.

BZ: I have loved reading books ever since I was a child. Were you like this when you were younger or were you a reluctant reader? Who encouraged you to read when you were younger?

RR: I was a reluctant reader until I was in middle school (around age 13). That’s why I have a lot of sympathy for reluctant readers. I liked to read with my parents, and I still think that’s one of the most powerful and important ways for a family to spend time together. I remember reading E.B. White and Roald Dahl with my mom, and mythology and tall tales with my dad. But I was never a child who would sit down and read just for fun. Later, however, I got into fantasy and would spend hours in Middle Earth. My middle school English teacher showed me how the Lord of the Rings was derived from Norse mythology, and I’ve been hooked on myths ever since.

BZ: It is now popular knowledge that the original Percy Jackson came into being through your attempts to motivate your son Haley after he had been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. What effect did the books have on Haley?

RR: Over the years, Haley and Percy have grown up together. Percy became a hero. Haley did some pretty heroic things too. He learned to overcome his learning disabilities, excelled in school, became a voracious reader, and even decided he wanted to write books of his own. He recently completed his first manuscript for a novel, which is longer than anything I’ve ever written!

BZ: As a teacher I have seen first-hand the improved self-esteem that kids with ADHD and/or dyslexia have felt after reading about Percy. Is this something you hear a lot from your readers and their parents?

RR: I always love when a child tells me they started reading because of Percy Jackson. I get thank you notes from parents, teachers and kids all the time, and that is the most gratifying part of my job.

BZ: Did you read to your children when they were younger? How important do you think it is that parents read to and with their kids?

RR: Yes, absolutely. I still read to my sons, as they are usually the first ones to hear each of my new books. It’s critical that parents model reading for their children, and treat reading as a family experience. If the parents are too busy to read, it’s a given that children will model that behaviour.

BZ: I have emails from my blog readers saying that their sons find reading boring. What advice would you give these parents?

RR: It’s very important to match readers with the right books. Every boy is different, but there are books out there that can appeal to almost any reader – male or female. Nonfiction counts as reading. A sports magazine counts. So do manga or graphic novels. Some boys love fantasy, some love thrillers. Try many different things, and above all strike up a good relationship with a librarian or bookseller. They have a wealth of information about titles that appeal to boys.

BZ: What other tips do you have for parents of children who are reluctant readers, or who are diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia?

RR: When it comes to encouraging readers, one size definitely does not fit all, but a few things tend to work well for most families: Have a family reading time every night. It doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you are reading. Provide the space and instil the habit. Second, let your children have a wide selection of material to choose from, and let them make their own choices (as long as they choose something!) Try different strategies to make reading more comfortable. Some reluctant readers do well with e-readers because it makes the text seem less daunting. Some kids prefer physical books. Sometimes dyslexic children benefit from using a straightedge to follow lines of text, or reading on a different colour background, like blue or red. Audiobooks are also very useful for some reluctant readers. I’m rather ADHD, and I always have a stress ball in my hand when I try to sit with a book. It gives me an outlet for that nervous energy and actually improves my focus. Most of all, don’t despair! My own son is proof that reluctant readers don’t have to be reluctant forever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Again, my heartfelt thanks to Rick for agreeing to take part in this and for sharing his experiences with us. I know that these answers will go some way to helping ease the worries of some of the parents who read this blog. My thanks also go to Justin at just so for asking me if I would like to be involved in the blog tour and making my year!

The Son of Neptune is released in the Uk on 4th October. Rick's Olympian Week blog tour continues tomorrow with Hephaestus Day over at The Bookette, but before you shoot off over there why not head on over to the Hunt For A Half-Blood Hero Competition by clicking on the image below. You could be in with a chance of winning the following:

• Heroes of Olympus, Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles author Rick Riordan streamed exclusively live into your school assembly.
• A trip for your class to your local SEA LIFE Centre www.visitsealife.com
• A full set of Rick Riordan books for your library

*** Interview with Mark Walden - H.I.V.E.: Aftershock Blog Tour Day 1

Today is Day One of the H.I.V.E.: Aftershock blog tour. Yes H.I.V.E. fans, in case you hadn't realised there is a seventh book in the series (published last week), and to celebrate Mark is embarking on a two week blog tour; you can find out where he will be stopping off my clicking on the banner to the right of this page. I have been a fan of the H.I.V.E. books ever since the first one was published, and so I feel honoured to be hosting Mark on Day One for this Q&A. At the end of this post you will find details of where you can find more about Mark and his books, as well as a link where you can download a sample chapter from Aftershock.

Hi Mark. Thanks for stopping off at The Book Zone. Firstly, how would you describe the H.I.V.E. series to someone discovering it for the first time?

I suppose that HIVE was written as a response to the various teen secret agent books that were coming out. I thought that while it may be interesting to find out where James Bond went to school it would be even more interesting to find out where Blofeld or Goldfinger were educated. That's the basic premise that I started off with but, now, seven books down the line, I think HIVE has evolved into a series about all of the forces of global villainy and how they are kept organised and controlled by Dr Nero, the school's headmaster. At it's core though it's action-packed, smart mouthed, globe trotting action, so if you like that kind of thing you'll probably like HIVE.

The latest book in the series is called Aftershock. What can you tell us about this book?

Not too much, unfortunately, without getting too heavily into spoilers but, I can say that this is a brand new story arc for Otto and the gang. One of the things that the book concentrates on, and it's something that I've always wanted to write, is the story of Raven's youth and how she came to be the woman she is today. Suffice to say, she did not have a pleasant childhood.

When you wrote the first H.I.V.E. book did you ever envisage that it would become a popular series of seven (plus) books?

No, never. At first I was just over the moon that the first book was being published but the fact that the series has been so successful and that there's still a demand for more is brilliant.

Do you have a favourite book from the H.I.V.E. Series?

The honest answer is that there isn't one book that I could hold up and say definitively that it was my favourite. The first book will always be special because, obviously, that's where it all began but, that's a sentimental thing more than anything else. Having said that, there are still certain things, especially in some of the earlier books that I'd like to go back and change but, I don't think that's terribly unusual. You'll probably be glad to hear that I'm not planning to go back and do any George Lucas style retrospective tinkering though!

How about a favourite scene?

It's not one specific scene but, the sections that I've most enjoyed writing are the sequences where Otto and the gang are all verbally sparring and taking the mickey out of each other, usually while they're in grave mortal peril. I've often said that I feel like I'm somehow just transcribing those conversations now because the characters are so clear in my head now that they almost seem to have a life of their own.

I know it is a little like a parent having to say which of their children is their favourite, but do you have a favourite character from the series (my personal favourite is Raven)?

Mine too! That's part of the reason that I wanted to go back and explore her past in more detail in Aftershock. I'd toyed with the idea of writing a separate book dealing with Raven as a kid but in the end I decided it would work better if it was woven into the existing series. I do have great fun writing her.

The first H.I.V.E book was published in 2006. Have you changed as an author over the past five years?

I've put on a few kilos and the odd grey hair has started to appear but, I don't think that's quite what you mean. My manuscripts are still always delivered slightly late to my editor, so I'm consistent in that respect at least, though I suspect she wishes I wasn't. I suppose my plotting has become slightly tighter over the years but, to be honest, there's still a healthy dose of making it up as I go too. I'm not the sort of writer who plans everything in minute detail before I start and that can catch me out occasionally but, I like having the freedom to run with a plot twist if an idea pops into my head halfway through the story. I know that goes against most of the advice that is given on how to write but, it's just what works for me.

What has been your personal high point over the past five years of H.I.V.E.?

Getting the first book published was a big high. It might sound slightly vain but, there's a real buzz to seeing your own book on the shop shelves for the first time. The novelty still hasn't worn off to be honest.

If you were to host a dinner party for any three people (alive or from the past), who would those three people be?

Albert Einstein, Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Twain. Now that would be a night to remember!

And if you were allowed to invite a few fictional characters as well?

James Bond, because somebody has to make the cocktails.

If you could pose one question to any writer, living or deceased, who would the writer be and what question would you ask?

Roald Dahl and I wouldn't have a question, I'd just like to thank him.

What would you rather be, a hero or a villain and why?

A villain obviously! Better costumes, better dialogue, better secret lairs, the list is endless....

Who is your favourite fictional villain (book or film)?

Darth Vader. Partly because seeing Star Wars for the first time in 1977 was one of the most memorable moments of my childhood but also because he's a tragic character in many respects and ultimately he achieves redemption. Whatever your feelings on the new Star Wars movies may be (and I'm with Tim from Spaced on this one) there's still something haunting about the whole idea of the fallen hero becoming the villain. Or it could just be that he has a fantastic costume...

Before you became an author you worked in the video game industry. Do you still have time to play many games these days? If so what are you current favourites?

I still play games all the time and I actually enjoy them a lot more now that I don't have to worry about making them too. My favourite games recently have been Arkham Asylum and Portal 2 but, I also have a secret weakness for the Lego games that the boys and girls at Traveller's Tales have done such a fantastic job on.

We are up to seven books in the H.I.V.E. Series now. Is Aftershock the first in another three book story arc? Want to give us any clues as to what is to come in the future?

Again, I don't want to give too much away but, anyone who's read Aftershock will know that I've left some of the characters in a very bad situation indeed. All I will say is that things are going to get a lot worse for them before they get better.....

Thank you for your time Mark. Is there anything else you would like to say to readers of The Book Zone?

Thank you for having me and if anyone reading this wants to come and talk to a bunch of raving loonies about the HIVE books then they should come along to the forums at www.markwalden.net or have a look at the official HIVE Facebook page www.facebook.com/markwaldenfan - Hope to see you there!

~~~

Huge thanks to Mark for taking the time to answer my questions. If you want to have a peak at a chapter from Aftershock then click here. Watch this space over the next few days for my review of Aftershock, and also a great competition where you could win a complete set of the H.I.V.E. books.

*** Immortal War Blog Tour: Interview with Justin Somper (author of the Vampirates series)

Today we are joined by Justin Somper, author of the brilliant Vampirates series. Justin has been visiting a number of blogs on his Immortal War blog tour, and we are his penultimate stop on the tour. 

Hi Justin. Thanks for stopping by The Book Zone to answer some questions for us. Firstly, now that the Vampirates saga has come to an end, how would you describe the series to someone discovering it for the first time?

I’m always having to do this at school events so, here goes… 500 years into the future, the oceans have risen and there’s a new golden age of piracy. If you want to make something of yourself in this world, you have to be a pirate – the Pirate Federation controls the oceans and even has a special school, the Pirate Academy. The oceans are teeming with pirate ships and at least one rather special pirate ship. Teenage twins Connor and Grace Tempest are shipwrecked off the coast of Eastern Australia and almost drown. He’s rescued by a passing pirate ship; she’s rescued – if that’s the right word – by a ship of Vampirates. Neither Connor nor Grace’s life will ever be the same again. Howzat?

When you wrote Demons of the Ocean did you ever envisage that it would become a popular series of six books?

I guess I knew from the moment I got the idea for Vampirates that it had the potential to run to a sequence of books. My initial UK contract was for four books so I knew even when I was writing DEMONS that there would some big story arcs. Just before DEMONS was published, I was signed up for Books 5 & 6 too, which was quite strange but nice. It was good knowing from that point how many books I was likely have to play with in order to tell the story and develop the characters.

Do you have a favourite book from the Vampirates series?

That’s a tough one to answer. I have tried to push myself so that each of the books eclipses the one before. I’m still a bit too close to IMMORTAL WAR to know if I’ve achieved that this time and, in any case, it’s a slightly different book because it does draw together a lot of threads. But there are certainly things in IMMORTAL WAR which I’m proud of and which I don’t think I’d have managed to pull off proficiently until now. If it isn’t IMWA, then it would be EMPIRE OF NIGHT. Having Connor and Grace stay with Sidorio and Lola offered up a lot of fun opportunities.

How about a favourite scene?

This is probably the scene in BLOOD CAPTAIN in which Stukeley returns to Ma Kettle’s Tavern. I like its intensity and the way it captures Stukeley’s conflict about what he’s become. Another definite favourite would be a scene very close to the end of IMMORTAL WAR involving Lola, Sidorio and a lot of blood. I shouldn’t say more than that but it really makes me smile!

How do you feel about finishing off the series and saying goodbye to your characters? Was it an emotional time for you? Is it hard to walk away from the series?

It is emotional. I’m writing these answers on publication day itself and I woke up feeling strangely emotional today. IMMORTAL WAR was a tough book to write because it was about saying goodbye. I think it has a certain elegiac quality and there are lots of references to clocks and time ticking away. Yes, I’m sad to be leaving these characters behind, though I’m not ruling out going back to them at some point in the future. I think that there are plenty of fresh stories waiting to be told. But at the same time, I’ve been working on these books for the past eight or nine years, which is a big chunk of time in itself. I think it’s important to create something completely fresh and frankly to show people that there is more to me as a writer than pirates and vampires.

The first Vampirates book was published in 2005. Have you changed as an author over the past six years?

Yes, I think I have. I feel like my writing has matured a lot and, as I say, with each book I feel I’ve been able to pull off things that I wouldn’t have managed in the previous one. This is 90% good but it means that I sometimes wish I could go back into DEMONS or TIDE OF TERROR and rework things a bit – a Director’s Cut if you like! I think I’ve found a certain style and also a tone I’m comfortable with. I suspect the books aged up slightly around BLOOD CAPTAIN and certainly from BLACK HEART on. This was not intentional – just about me finding my voice I think.

What has been your personal high point over the past six years of Vampirates?

The things I’ve loved most have been the writing itself and getting out and meeting readers, in this country and overseas. I particularly remember attending the Texas Librarians’ Conference in Houston and having a school librarian tell me how much her kids enjoyed the books. That gave me an amazing sense of how far, in every sense, the books have travelled. Equally, working with a bunch of Gifted and Talented kids at a school in Devon who helped me with a scene in EMPIRE OF NIGHT was really fun and satisfying. Just last week, I was talking to a mum who said that my books had started her son reading – that’s a huge privilege to hear. And I can still remember the first event I did where the kids had read the book and suddenly I realised it didn’t just exist in my head any more but now the story and characters were out there for sharing with others. That was, and always is, a magical feeling.

I read a while ago about your plans to write Crossing Stories, the Vampirates “spin-off” book. Is this still going to happen?

Well I’m still under contract so I would think so! Seriously, I know how much my hardcore readers want to know Lorcan’s crossing story and others too and I am equally excited about writing this down. I have some fresh ideas about this so watch this space!

Do you have time to read many other books written for children and Young Adults? Any current favourites or authors we should be looking out for in 2011?

I’m not as well read as I should be. When I’m writing, I don’t like to read other comparable fiction. Well, it’s not so much that I don’t like to but my mind can’t seem to process it. So I have rather a lot of catching up to do whenever I finish a book. So I think you’re better placed to advise me than vice-versa.

If you could pose one question to any writer, living or deceased, who would the writer be and what question would you ask?

I’d like to chat to Shakespeare and find out more about his process! Did he know just how good everything he wrote was and how easily did it come to him?

If you were to host a dinner party for any three people (alive or from the past), who would those three people be?

Hmm, you said some of the questions would be fiendish and I think we’ve now reached that juncture… I’m going to plump for three of my favourite writers. F Scott Fitzgerald, Tim Winton and PD James. I imagine Fitzgerald would be quite a character. I have a feeling I’d get on with Tim Winton, whose book CLOUDSTREET is a huge favourite of mine. And PD James is just a complete idol of mine. I love the fact that she is ninety and at the height of her writing powers. That’s one of the most appealing sides of our profession.

And if you were allowed to invite a few fictional characters as well?

I’m going to be completely selfish and have a selection of VAMPIRATES characters, please. Sometimes it does feel like I’ve been living in close proximity with them anyhow.

What would you rather be, a vampire or a pirate and why?

A pirate, because I think – on the whole – it makes for a simpler and happier existence.

What next for Justin Somper? Anything in the pipeline that you can tell us about?

Sure – if I kill you! Only joking. I am working on a new idea but it’s too early to talk about or even know if it’s going to work out. But I’m excited about being back at the beginning of something and thinking up new settings and characters. No pirates or vampires in the next thing though. I think I can safely promise you that.

Thank you for your time Justin. Is there anything else you would like to say to readers of The Book Zone?

Just that I hope you enjoy the books and if you have any further questions, come and chat on my blog at vampirates.co.uk or on twitter (@JustinSomper). Thanks for being part of this blog tour and for the valuable exposure you give to books for young people and boys especially.

~~~

Huge thanks to Justin for taking the time to answer my questions. If you enjoyed reading his answers why not head on over to I Want To Read That tomorrow for the final stop off on Justin's tour.