The Official Matthew Reilly Homepage

I know, I know, I should have had these Thoughts done by the 4th. I'm a couple of days late! Sorry, but I've been very busy!
So what, then, has been happening...

Well, after my rave for Dog Soldiers last month, I fear that I have to report that I haven't been watching many movies lately. The last film I saw was Ned Kelly, and I found it to be pretty weak. Well shot, sure; well made, yes; but with enough money you can shoot any script well. The tragedy was that the film was almost completely devoid of narrative drive -- movements from scene to scene were just simple cuts, they weren't driven by a compelling story. I don't know, maybe I just like out-of-control stories a bit too much!

That said, the movies on at the cinema are so poor at the moment that I'm staying away and simply waiting for The Matrix Reloaded. Might check out X-Men 2, since I've been hearing good things about it (and since it had such a monster opening in the US).

Funny then that I am looking forward this week to a BBC documentary to be aired here in Australia (on the ABC) called Hollywood Inc. It's about how Hollywood blockbusters are made, how stars wield their powers, and how 6 out of 10 Hollywood films lose money. I'm curious to see if it addresses the topic of big star "Pay or Play" deals and the effect these deals have on movie-making (I read about this recently). Hey, if I can't watch a decent movie at the moment, I might as well find out why!

...people start quoting you on the Internet. I visited a high school recently for a literature festival (good school, Newington), and spoke candidly to some groups of students. Now, when I speak to school-age readers, I'm generally more open, mainly because I want school students who may want to write books to know all about the process.

Sometimes, though, I am extra generous when outlining my upcoming books or projects. After visiting Newington, I was interested to see that some of my comments about the storyline of Scarecrow had quickly made their way onto The Presidian.net website. (As it happened, I mentioned this in my last ‘Thoughts' anyway)

For the record, I don't mind this! This is the world today: if you give out information in any way, anyone can disseminate it via the Net. And if they get it to the right audience, they have a scoop. It just means that I have to be more circumspect and say to myself "Be careful what you reveal, because everything you say could wind up on the Internet."

This happened with Area 7: I did one small reading at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2001 several months before Area 7 was to be released. As a teaser, I read a short action scene from it, and guess what...it was up on the web the next day!

In the end, on this topic, I subscribe to the Oscar Wilde dictum: the only worse than being talked about is not being talked about!

Speaking of www.thepresidian.net, I was cruising through its musings the other day and thought that this month, I could answer some of the questions raised there.

It has some very funny threads about each of my books titled "Things I learnt from Area 7..." or "Things I learnt from Temple". My favourite from the Area 7 thread was: "never trust anyone who is named after a snake". This is very true.

This is not actually spelled out in the book, and deliberately so. I wanted it to be intentionally vague, so as to keep Book II's loyalty to Schofield in question. I felt it was probably answered by Book's actions, but since both of them appear in Scarecrow, you can be pretty assured that it will be resolved there.

One contributor to thepresidian.net recently criticised the back-cover blurb for Area 7, saying that a non-Matthew Reilly reader might not pick it up based on the back-cover blurb. An interesting question -- especially given that I myself wrote it! (I have crafted the back-cover blurbs for all the Australian editions of my books, with comments from the people at Pan Macmillan.)

Writing a blurb is really quite difficult, and Area 7's blurb was the hardest of all, since it involved outlining the story (in a couple of paragraphs) and also telling readers that the hero was Schofield (a character who would be familiar to my existing readers and yet also interesting to new readers). I felt it was pretty good, but I've found that, unlike books or scripts, when you write a blurb, you are never fully happy...because you can't say too much about the story, and you only have very few paragraphs to say what you've got to say. I generally prefer short blurbs myself. (My US and British blurbs are done in-house)

I am particularly fond of the scene in Temple where William Race falls out the back of a cargo plane...inside a tank...with a ticking bomb to disarm during the fall!

I have set up a room in my house as an office. It houses my computer, printer and fax, many many books (both fiction and research) and is surrounded by movie posters of my favourite films (like Die Hard and Blade Runner) and memorabilia (spaceships, a little figure of Robocop, my cool little Argonath bookends). I have always loved to surround myself with inspiration. Even when I was living at home, writing my first books, I surrounded myself with movie posters and the like.

This is a really interesting question: is an author ever really satisfied with their book as published, or do they yearn to tweak and re-edit it. For me, I've never wanted to change a word of Ice Station, Temple or Area 7 (or indeed, Scarecrow). Contest was different, indeed, counting the new US edition, I have rewritten Contest three times now: the self-published version, the Australian Pan Macmillan version, and the US version. Now, I'm happy with it and don't feel it needs any further changes.

It's funny, but you do come to accept a book -- even with its flaws. This is, in fact, one reason why I prefer the original Star Wars of 1977 over its "Special Edition" of the early 90's: you love it, flaws and all -- I for one, am always amazed at what Lucas did with 1977 technology. A book is what it is, and (I believe) it is very often a product of the time it was written.

Easy. I once heard the screenwriter, Jeff Arch (writer of Sleepless in Seattle) say "You are not an aspiring writer, you are a writer."

This is a common question that I get asked in emails -- many people start writing novels but sometimes they lose their motivation halfway through. For me, motivation comes from the outset, from the basic idea behind each book that I set out to write. Unless I am buzzed by the premise I have created, I won't be motivated. So I don't start a book unless I am amazingly excited about my premise.

For example, with Area 7, I just loved the idea of putting a device on the President's heart and then throwing him in harm's way. Motivation was never an issue because the central premise was exciting to me.

Remember, it takes me a whole year to write a book, so that means I have to get pretty excited about an idea before I start on it. Area 7 was the third of three ideas I had at the time I started it. But it was certainly the one I was keenest on.

Well, that was pretty intense. But since I was two days late, I suppose I had to work a little harder this time!

As a closing point, don't believe everything you read on the Net. During my surfing, I noticed that someone on The Presidian fansite said they had once heard me speak and quoted me as saying that my parents "let me read all the bad books as a kid, so now I'm writing the worst books I can." Negative insinuations aside, I have never said (and would never say) any such thing, especially about my parents. Be careful about people who claim "to have been there". They may not have been.