The Official Matthew Reilly Homepage

Hello there. Matthew Reilly here once again. Been terribly busy writing the new book this past month (when you get deep into the second half of a novel, you just can't stop - you stop reading other books, eating, paying attention to your friends when they're talking).

As such, I haven't been able to get to these thoughts until now. But here I am!

This was a birthday gift from some friends, and despite the rampaging writing that I've been doing, I've been reading it late at night.

Basically, this is one big fat monster of a book outlining the major scientific and philosophical moments of the 20th century. The author's only limitation: since most 20th century books get bogged down in all the wars, he does not mention war. Which makes this book truly fascinating.

From Freud and Einstein to Bertrand Russell and Leo Henrik Baekeland - he invented plastic - this is an amazing book. And for someone like me (who is just a sponge for knowledge, but who doesn't have time to read every work on every individual philospher and scientist) it is fantastic.

I always try to make these "Thoughts" sections informative for would-be writers, usually just by reporting what I do. Reading this kind of book is exactly what I do: I just read anything and everything that will give me knowledge and story ideas. If you want to write, in my opinion, reading this kind of book is a good start.

I wandered into the Matthew Reilly Fan Forum the other day just to see what people were saying about me…and saw that the death of Leo Van Lewen in Temple seemed to have struck a nerve with some readers.

Killing "nice" characters is an interesting dilemma for an author. Why do I do it? Simple: movies and books become predictable when all the "nice" characters are immune from harm. When I wrote Ice Station and killed Book Snr, I wanted readers to be shocked, to say, "God, if Reilly can kill Book, then no-one is safe, not even Schofield." It makes a thriller more thrilling.

It was the same for Temple - although with a curious twist (which other writers might find interesting). Van Lewen was always going to die in Temple. That was planned from the start. He was not, however, meant to die in such a cold-blooded "execution-style" manner. But when you write a book, sometimes when you get to page 500 and the plan just doesn't quite fit perfectly anymore.

There was a whole gigantic action scene planned for Temple which never made it into the book. You see, when I got to that point in the story where Van Lewen dies, I felt that the addition of the action scene would be too much, would make the book too long. And so I never wrote it. But I still had the ending to write. So, like someone cutting the wiring to a house, I had to rewire the rest of the story so that everything else still ended as it should. The action scene was replaced by the (rather confronting) execution scene.

Now, however, with future books, a new challenge arises: because of the precedents I set in Ice Station and Temple, are readers now expecting me to "whack" a key characters in this new book? Well, that I will not answer... yet!

A very common question in the emails I'm receiving: why don't I set my novels in Australia? There are two answers to this question.

First, I like to tell stories where the fate of the world is at stake, where the balance of world power is at issue. Sadly, Australia is not the most influential country in the world today (it comprises about 1.3% of global market capitalisation, if that is a guide) and does not really hold much sway in matters of world power. Ergo, I don't set my books here.

The second reason is more personal: I write to escape. Just as people read to escape, I write to escape, to go to another place in my mind. And living in Sydney, I see Australia every day. Which is why I love to travel to Antarctica or Peru or the Utah desert in my head when I write my books.

At present, the one place in Australia that I am thinking of writing about is the far northern reaches of Western Australia: again, because it would be an escape for me, and because Bill Bryson said that maybe are doomsday cults out there conducting nuclear experiments!

Oh, and keep an eye out in November for my brother, Stephen's, debut novel, Ninety East Ridge. While it's not a thriller (it is more introspective than my work) it is an amazing and original book - perhaps the most original story I have read in years...

I'd just like to apologise to the world (if it's listening) for the comments of my Prime Minister, John Howard, regarding the contribution that George W. Bush has made "to all mankind" in his War on Terror. Now, I've seen people toadying up to others before, but this was just ridiculous.

I have admired Mr Howard's tenacity in the past (he is without doubt a very resilient and determined man), but I was saddened when he used some "boat people" incidents and September 11 to bolster his chances of re-election last year. He also actively divided my country to defeat a referendum on Australia becoming a republic in 1999. The idea of a Prime Minister dividing the people he leads is just appalling. Unfortunately, there is no real "opposition" coming from the Federal Opposition to counter these acts, so we are stuck with a government that is, quite simply, doing what it likes.

As I mentioned above, I visited the "Terra Communis Matthew Reilly Fan Forum" recently. Geez. There are some hardcore fans there. You should read their expectations on the new Schofield book!

Rest assured, the new book rocks. It is not based on the structure of any of the other books. It is something entirely new, wholly different, a radical (and super super fast) model for the thriller. In years to come, my first 4 books will be known as "Reilly Version 1.0", this new one will be the start of "Version 2.0".

P.S. I will be travelling a fair bit around Australia in the coming months: in August, I'll be at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Marist College in Tasmania, and even Brisbane briefly. And maybe later in the year, a visit to far north Queensland will be on the cards... Stay tuned. Details will follow.