Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Q. Have you ever thought about doing a movie version of the books?

A. Yes, many times! I'd love to see a movie adaptation of the series, but it would have to be a good version... There have been production companies interested in the series, but so far the right people haven't come along. I'm not overly protective of the books and characters, but sometimes the movie and TV people want to make too many changes. "This guy Colin... could we make him twenty-five and live in a fancy loft apartment in Manhattan? Also, we don't like the title. And that ending won't look good on film - it'll have to change. And the names of the characters. And everything that happens to them."

There's been far too many bad adaptations of young adult novels in recent years, and I'd rather not have my books associated with a rotten movie! Some people say that all publicity is good publicity, but that's not true: there's a particular very successful book series (I won't name it!) that sold in great numbers until the movie adaptation came out... The movie flopped, and that tainted the books. Sales plummeted. I don't want that to happen!

As my friend and fellow author Michael Scott once said, "More people will see a bad movie than will ever read a good book."

 

Q. Would you ever write a movie yourself?

A. I have done so! I was commissioned to write a screenplay many years ago, but the movie was never made. There's a fun and totally true story connected to that... With screenplays there's a rule-of-thumb that one page of the screenplay equates to a minute of movie-time. So a sixty-minute movie will have a screenplay of around sixty pages. Well, the first draft of the movie I wrote came in at one hundred and twenty pages. That's a two-hour movie - far too long! The producer (i.e., the man with the money) told me to chop it down. "It's too slow. You need to rewrite it, speed up the action. Bring it in at ninety pages."

I could tell from the producer's other comments that he hadn't actually read the screenplay at all. He'd just looked at the number of pages and decided that it was too long. Since the money I was due to receive wasn't very much, and I was pretty certain that the movie would never get made anyway, I didn't want to spend another month rewriting the screenplay. So instead I reduced the size of the typeface, and narrowed the margins. This meant more words per page... Which had the desired effect of compacting the 120-page screenplay right down to 91 pages, with no other changes. I printed out a fresh copy, sent it to the producer, and he loved it. "Much better! It's faster, punchier, it really rockets along!" He gave me my check and I ran like crazy to the bank before he could cancel it. The project is long since defunct, but I'll bet you anything you like that he still hasn't read either draft of the screenplay.

 

Q. What are your own favourite movies?

A. I've always had a great love for superhero movies (with a few exceptions: when they get it wrong, they really get it wrong!), and in recent years I've particularly enjoyed Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and almost all of the Marvel movies (especially Thor, which I adored!).

But setting superheroes aside, here's a quick list of some of my all-time favourite movies. These are movies that, for a variety of reasons, I could watch over and over and never get bored... Raising Arizona, The Truman Show, The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, Shoot 'em Up, Josie and the Pussycats (Yes, I know! But I can't help it - I love that film!), And Justice for All, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Despicable Me, Serenity, Catch Me if You Can, So I Married an Axe Murderer, To Kill a Mockingbird, Strictly Ballroom, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Hot Fuzz, Dredd, Shakespeare in Love, Some Like it Hot, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Goodfellas, The Descent, Napoleon Dynamite, Grosse Pointe Blank, Primal Fear, This is Spinal Tap, The Big Lebowski, In Bruges, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Little Miss Sunshine, Gran Torino, The Thing, The Mask of Zorro, Zoolander, Con Air, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Megamind, Ghost World, Ice Age, The Mask, Brain Donors... That's all I can think of off the top of my head!

 

Q. Favourite TV Shows?

A. Psych, Firefly, Elementary, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5, South Park, Green Wing, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, The Office (US version - I love the UK version too, but the US version is better!), Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Big Bang Theory, Angel, My Name is Earl... I'm sure I've missed a lot out of that list!

 

Q. Can you explain a little about your writing style and how you developed it?

A. I don't think I have just have one style to which I adhere at all times - I change my style to suit the genre and tone of the book or story that I'm writing!

In general, I try to keep my writing as simple as possible. (Well, I do when I'm writing fiction!). There are several reasons I aim for simplicity, and I shall now list them for you, in non-alphabetical order:

1. Clarity. If I wanted to, I could write my stories with fancy, poetic language that would sparkle in the reader's mind like the glistening crystalline dewdrops that manifest like an angel's joyful tears on the cerise petals of a blossoming rose during a frost-bitten spring sunrise. But that would be showing off. I prefer "invisible" writing, by which I mean that the reader should not be aware that he or she is reading. If at any point the reader thinks, "Oh, that's a clever phrase!" then the writer has failed. The purpose of a novel is to entertain the reader, not entertain the writer (it should to that, too, but the reader is more important!).

2. Reader identification. With a Young Adult novel, the reader will often picture himself or herself as the protagonist, so if I overload the text with specific descriptions of the characters, that makes it more difficult for the reader to identify with the characters. For example, in the first New Heroes book (Quantum Prophecy: The Awakening in the USA), I give only the vaguest descriptions of the main characters, but (as far as I know) the readers have never had any trouble distinguishing them... Characters should be distinguishable by their actions and their voices, not because the writer keeps throwing in stuff like, "The tall boy skidded to a stop next to Barnaby, who had brown hair and green eyes and forty-seven freckles and an eyepatch and an earpatch and teeth made out of Lego bricks."

Likewise, I don't go into too much description when it comes to locations. In the first two New Heroes books, the main heroes Colin and Danny live in a town. I don't say what it's called, or even in which country that town resides. I keep the descriptions non-specific, but with just enough details that the reader will automatically picture his or her own home-town. This was a deliberate decision because even though Colin and Danny actually come from the town in Ireland in which I grew up, I've received letters and emails from readers all over Ireland and the UK and even other parts of Europe who are convinced that I'm writing about their town.

3. Pace. My YA novels tend to have a lot of action, so keeping the language simple gives a sense of speed to the action. If the readers can read the story faster, it feels like the action is faster. To get this to work, it's necessary to understand how people read: at first, when we're learning to read, we examine the letters one at a time and build them into words in our head. Later, we learn to take in words and phrases as a whole, without actually breaking them down. You've probably noticed that you read aloud a lot slower than you can read silently, and that's why. Reading aloud requires you to see, interpret and speak each word individually. When reading to yourself you convert the words straight from marks on the page into images in your head, frequently without consciously noticing the actual words themselves. That explains why, when you encounter a new or unusual word like "reprangificationistic," it's like hitting a speed-bump on a highway.

Another device I use is to always try to give the main characters names that start with different letters. That makes it a lot easier for the readers to remember who is who. I discovered the importance of this trick when reading Stephen King's horror novel It. That book's two main male characters are called Ben and Bill. Throughout the entire book, I could never remember which was which. I had to keep flipping back to the opening chapters to check. Now, if Mr. King had called the second one Will instead of Bill, that problem would have been avoided.

4. Accessibility. Simpler language allows less experienced readers to enjoy the book. I do still tend to throw in a few big words here and there, but on the whole I've found that even the youngest readers can grasp relatively complex situations and ideas as long as the language is clear and simple.

Simplifying the language of a novel without compromising it is one of the trickiest parts of the writing process, but I believe that it's worth the struggle! Or, to put it another way, I put in the hard work so that the reader doesn't have to.

 

Q. Do you think your birthplace and age have had a significant impact on your writing?

A. I think that's inevitable. I was born in Ireland in 1966, and I've lived here ever since. Ireland is a small nation - physically and by population - so we don't produce a lot of original media compared with the USA or our nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom. Consequently, when I was growing up I was exposed to a lot of British and American books, comics, movies and television. (This explains why people in Ireland sometimes have a clearer understanding of American life than the average American has of life in Ireland! For example: Irish actors are usually pretty good at faking American accents, but it's very rare to find an American actor who can convincingly fake an Irish accent... I mean, I was most of the way through Shallow Hal before I realised that one of the characters was supposed to be Irish. Honestly, I have never heard anyone over here speak like that! Also, Irish people never, ever, ever say "Top of the mornin'!" and you'd be hard-pressed to find an image of a Leprechaun outside of a tourist shop...)

But I digress... It seems to me that people who grow up in a country that's officially bilingual tend to have a good understanding of language and story-telling because it's in our nature to think about words and their meanings. I say "officially bilingual" because over here we're taught the Irish language - Gaelic - in school, but not many people like it much because it's mandatory, and it's really, really difficult to learn. Plus it's not what you might call a "pretty" language: lots of words change their sound and spelling depending on context. And they also change depending on location: people in the west of the country sometimes have different Gaelic words for certain things than the rest of the country. Trust me: if you ever want to get a feel for what it's like to learn Gaelic, try using your forehead to hammer a railroad spike through a concrete block. You'll end with the same result... a splitting headache and an unshakeable sense of futility.

I've digressed again, sorry!

I suspect that the date of my birth had an influence on my writing only because I was the exact right age to enjoy Star Wars when it was released. You young kids of today with your PlayBoxes and Rap 'n' Roll music and your blu-ray CDs and Wi-Hi-fi and all that... We had none of it! Back then, all this was fields as far as the eye could see, and the Internet didn't exist. And even if it had existed, it would have been in black and white.

So, Star Wars was a huge influence on my generation because it was new, reasonably original, exciting, and it felt like it had been made especially for us. Which it was, I suppose: it was my generation who made George Lucas a bazillionaire because we're the ones who bought all the toys (except me: I never cared for the Star Wars action figures: they're tiny and have far too few points of articulation!). Star Wars brought people back into the cinema in record numbers; the rise of television had all but wiped out the movie theatres, but Star Wars turned all of that around. And its success led to countless imitators not only in the cinema, but also on TV, in books and comic-books. Where once it had been possible to read every science fiction book in the local library (and I had achieved that very thing!), suddenly science fiction was everywhere.

My age was also, luckily, ideal for the emergence of low-cost computer technology. I was seventeen when I bought my first computer. I taught myself to program it and two years later I was able to leave my job in the post office and start work for a software company.

 

Q. Which of your other novels do you think is your best?

A. Probably Razorjack: Double-Crossing. That's an adult science fiction / horror novel inspired by the Razorjack comicbook character created by writer / artist John Higgins. Some years ago John and I were talking about Razorjack and where he wanted to take the character, and I - naturally! - suggested that it would be fun and interesting to explore Razorjack's world through a series of novels. John was immediately on-board for the idea, and was kind enough to let me do anything I wanted with his characters and settings.

In the original graphic novel, Razorjack is an otherworldly entity who seeks to destroy all living things, in all dimensions. A portal to our dimension is accidentally created, and Razorjack is able to send her vicious warriors through to Earth. It's a tremendously inventive and quite vicious tale - and very definitely for adult readers! - and, as you'll know if you're familiar with John's art, it looks amazing.

For my novel, I decided to expand a little on John's ideas of how Razorjack's world works, and to that end I created a new set of characters. The hero, Kevin Dixon, is a small-time crook who betrays a major crime boss... The crime boss is out for revenge, and - viewing Earth from her own dimension - Razorjack sees this as an opportunity. She can't easily cross over into our dimension herself, so she sends one of her most deadly and feared warriors, Katana. The story is mostly set in London, and I had a great time plotting all the action scenes with Katana chasing Dixon!

Writer Al Ewing also wrote a Razorjack novel, and his is much, much darker than mine! The third novel in the series was written by John himself, building on his own original graphic novel as well as my book and Al's.

Unfortunately, shortly after my book was launched the deal with the publishers fell through, so Al's and John's books have yet to see print. And I think there was only about fifty copies of mine printed! Hopefully, it won't be too long before we can get a new contract and the books will receive a mass-market edition.

I'm also very fond of my first Judge Dredd novella, The Cold Light of Day. It's set in Dredd's early years as a Judge (in Dredd's first appearance in the comics, he's already been a Judge for twenty years). I had an absolute ball writing that one! Because it's a novella, it's only a little over a third of the length of a standard novel, but I packed a lot in there.

It was initially supposed to be only available as an e-book, but the sales and the reviews have been very strong, so later this year it'll be published as a physical book in an omnibus edition with Matt Smith's City Fathers and a brand new novella by Al Ewing.

I've recently delivered my second Dredd e-book. No word yet on when that one will be published, but I can tell you that it's quite a bit different to the first!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5