Sean McMullen’s first young adult novel was The Ancient Hero (2004), and he followed this with a teenage time travel novel, Before the Storm (2007). Sean has over a dozen YA stories published, but most of his adult novels also have a large teenage following. His 2002 novel Voyage of the Shadowmoon featured a vampire who had been a teenager for seven hundred years, and was pretty depressed about it. He currently has a novella nominated for the 2011 Hugo Award.

1. Your latest book, Changing Yesterday, is a steampunk tale set in London and Melbourne in 1901. Why steampunk, and can you give us a bit of insight into your research process?

I think of steampunk as retro science fiction, generally from the Victorian era. Steampunk does not have to include steam engines, but it so happens that some of the action in my book takes place in the passenger liner Andromeda’s engine room, beside its huge triple expansion steam engines. Barry, a boy from 1901, has stolen a deadly weapon from Liore, a cadet from the future who has traveled into the past to stop a terrible war from breaking out. Barry hopes to sell the weapon to the king and get a knighthood. As a result, there is a long and eventful chase between ships traveling from Melbourne to London, interspersed with quite a bit of romance and partying. Readers get a view of the British Empire at its height, the ships that held it together, and the distant ancestors of radio, petrol engines, and other machines that we take for granted today. It is a good way to make history interesting, because history can be interesting without wars, revolutions, genocides and atrocities.

The research was not easy, but it was fun. It was not hard to get information on the machines, but the social and human sides were a problem. Like today, technology was changing rapidly back then, as were fashions, popular music, dances, and even social attitudes. At a general level the movie Titanic gave a good overview, but the eleven years between 1901 and 1912 saw too much change, so I had to research 1901 in specific detail. I went to the State Library and read newspapers and magazines from that year, and the internet even provided motion picture footage from the opening of parliament in Melbourne. Shipboard life was the hardest to get right, yet that was central to the novel. I had to got to autobiographies to get enough detail. It may seem like a lot of trouble to go to over a novel, but this is not fantasy, so I could not just make things up.

2. Sean, as well as having sung in folk-rock band, Joe Wilson’s Mates and for the Victorian State Opera, you’ve also made early musical instruments. How does music influence your writing process and what’s on your iPod/stereo at the moment?

Music has a very big influence on me as an author. I often visualise scenes from my novels as if they were movies, with theme music in the background, and this really helps with establishing the emotional mood. In the novel I am just finishing at present, the knights take musicians along into battle. This is because the bards play instruments when singing about battles, so the knights think that real battles need music. As peculiar as it sounds, this sort of thing did happen in real life as well. The story that relied most heavily on my musical background was The Colours of the Masters, in which a woman invents a record-only sound machine around 1830, then spends about forty years secretly recording the playing of the great masters of Nineteenth Century music. Over a century after her death, a young geek with a laser pickup works out how to play her glass disks back. I’ve even done a movie script version of this story, so if this ever attracts a producer and funding, you will hear the music in my work for the first time.

Lately my stereo has been playing a lot of early Nineteenth Century music, because I am writing a novelette set in 1812, during the Napoleonic Wars. The television series Sharpe made extremely good use of military and folk music from this time, so I often have episodes of Sharpe playing to set the general mood.  If I really, really want to get in the mood, I pick up my concertina and play the tunes for myself. I know concertinas did not exist in 1812, but it’s what I happen to play.

3. You’ve been involved in medieval re-enactment societies and have actually trekked the Strezleki Desert in medieval armour ‘to get a feel for quest-style travel’ (!). What is it about this period that interests you, and how would you spend a day in medieval Europe if you had a time machine?

The medieval era was a romantic but dangerous time, and I suppose that people like it for that reason. For example, today’s sex scandals are dealt with in media interviews and confessions to Who and Hello, but back then it was trial by combat and a fight to the death. Attitudes were rather different too, so anyone tired of being politically correct today can really let themselves off the leash with a medieval story. The romance story as we know it was actually invented in the Middle Ages, around 1150. Until then, the epics were all about rather violent, upper class oafs shouting insults at each other, then fighting. After 1150  the stories included women and romance, and the hero was meant to have charm and good manners as well as fighting prowess. This was such a hit that real life medieval people started to live like the fictional characters. That’s probably the ultimate attraction of the medieval era. It’s a real-life setting based on a some very cool adventure-romances.

If I could go back to that time, it would definitely be to attend a tournament. You get to see the whole of medieval society in one place, there is dramatic action and romantic intrigue, the patron often hands out free food and drink, and there are loads of vendors, musicians, jugglers and shifty characters for background entertainment. However, I would not participate under any circumstances. The dangers of the tournament were only for trained, fit and thoroughly loopy people, but I am only trained and fit. Tournaments really were the high point of the medieval social calendar. For the participants, fortunes could be made or lost, depending on the outcome. Lives could be lost too, and they often were. As spectators, you could also see your king and queen dressed up as King Arthur and Queen Guenevere, and some of the knights fought while dressed as knights of the Round Table, devils, monsters and even monks and nuns. Medieval kings and queens dressing up as medieval kings and queens? Yes, it did happen.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

This may come as a bit of a shock but in Changing Yesterday my favourite is a secondary character, Madeline, the Ballarat waitress who wants to run away to London to become the first female detective. True, she is a dreamer who has been reading too much Sherlock Holmes, but unlike most dreamers she has been doing the hard work to make her dream real. Her father is a policeman, so she has made the most of her background and learned about crime investigation from him. She is saving money and she is a waitress, which means she can support herself while she is setting up her detective agency in London. When Liore walks into Madeline’s coffee shop and gives her the opportunity to leave for London that very day, she takes the frighteningly hard decision to dump her secure but boring life, and run away with an appallingly dangerous stranger.

By contrast, the heroic schoolboy Daniel lets himself be swept along by circumstances, while his friend Barry is too thick to know that he is attempting the impossible by trying to meet the king. The deadly Liore does not understand fear or doubt, and is willing to sacrifice everything, including herself and her friends, to complete her mission. If I were to do a third book in the series, it would set it in London, with Madeline setting up her detective agency and Daniel and Barry helping out. In a way Madeline is a symbol of all authors. Writing is a very hard field to succeed in, the competition is fierce, and the odds are not at all good. Still, the Madelines of the world have faith in themselves, back up their dreams with hard work, and often make good.

Check out Sean’s site here!

Nansi Kunze grew up surrounded by books in Australia and the UK. After studying languages and ancient history at university, she spent several years teaching foreign doctors how to pronounce rude words and teenagers how to mummify each other, while cultivating a taste for manga and video games in her spare time. Unsurprisingly, her early attempts at writing serious adult fiction failed. Fortunately she proved to be much better at writing slightly zany Young Adult fiction, and her first YA novel, Mishaps, was published by Random House Australia in 2008. Her second, Dangerously Placed, has just been released. She lives on a small farm overlooking the Victorian Alps with her husband and son.

1. Congrats on the recent release of ‘Dangerously Placed’, Nansi. A YA mystery novel (that our reviewer loved), this is your second book. 2008’s ‘Mishaps’ was met with very favourable reviews, including many remarks about your keen sense of humour. What makes you laugh? How difficult is it to translate your own sense of humour to your audience?

I’m blushing now! Well, I’ve got to admit that I’m easily amused – a lot of things make me laugh. Some of my biggest influences, though, are classic school-based films and TV shows (John Hughes movies, Buffy and so on), and the greats of British humorous writing, like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. One of the elements I enjoy the most about those forms of humour is that the characters don’t take themselves too seriously. If your protagonist makes a fool of herself in front of her friends, sure, that can be entertaining – but it’s even better if she has a ready quip to make about the situation.

The funny bits of a novel are usually the easiest parts for me to write, because I’ll often note down ridiculous situations and cheeky remarks I want to include in a novel while I’m still in the early planning stage. I don’t really think much about whether what I’m picturing as funny will seem that way to my audience, to be honest – I guess I just assume that it will. I probably should be more worried about that! Fortunately, I have great test readers and editors to bounce my ideas off and to help me realise if any of it falls flat.

2. I’ve read that you weren’t always an aspiring writer. Your academic background includes Ancient History and European languages & your CV includes a pretty eclectic mix of job positions! What impact has your prior research and work experience had on your creative writing and do you continue to research now?

It’s true that I wasn’t one of those people who grew up writing stories all the time and dreaming of being a writer – it was more just something I started doing one day and got hopelessly addicted to! Having had an ‘eclectic mix’ of jobs can be useful if you do end up becoming a writer, since it gives you a wide range of experiences to draw on (although I must confess that I’ve yet to find a good use for the time I spent teaching rude slang to overseas-trained doctors). The most useful job I’ve had in terms of my writing was being a high school teacher – the first YA story I ever wrote involved a teacher mummifying a student in toilet paper, which I used to do with my year 8 History students – but I probably draw on my experiences as a high school student just as much.

I do still research quite a lot. While some of it is just Googling the technologies I base the speculative elements of stories on, other parts are a bit more hands-on. The book I’m working on now is set in several different locations around the world. Later this year I’m travelling to England to visit family and stopping off briefly at each of those places along the way to do a little book research (yep, it’s a tough life as a writer!). My background in languages helps a fair bit with that kind of information-gathering, but I also love finding out about things I didn’t study at uni, like the genetics I looked into for Mishaps. It’s one of the great privileges of being a novelist, I think: knowing that absolutely anything you learn or experience is potentially useful for your work!

3. Now that you’ve written two YA novels, do you think you’ll continue writing for that audience? What other sorts of writing do you do? Who do you read?

Oh, it’s YA all the way for me! I feel like I belong in the world of teenage fiction. It’s got an intensity that I think is often missing in writing aimed at adults, and I don’t feel that the scope I have to play with as a YA writer is any less broad than I’d have if I were writing for adults. I don’t really do any other kind of writing at the moment. except the occasional blog post or interview! Being a mum to a preschooler takes up a lot of my time, so when I have the chance to write I head straight for my current YA manuscript. The novel I’m writing at the moment is full of glamour and intrigue, so it’s extra-fun to write, and I never feel sad that I haven’t got the time to start any other stories.

I mostly read YA too. I don’t usually stick to one particular sub-genre – I wander along the Teen shelves at the library every week looking for anything that catches my eye. I often bring out old favourites to re-read: any of the Discworld books that feature Granny Weatherwax, Diana Wynne Jones’s works for older readers, my collection of Rosemary Sutcliff novels. I read a lot of manga too; right now I’m desperate for the next volume in Bisco Hatori’s awesome manga Ouran High School Host Club to be released. I don’t think I’d ever have the patience to write a long series – it drives me mad just waiting for other people to finish theirs!

Q. 4 Which of all your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

That’s a tricky one! I suppose, like a lot of authors, while I’m working on a particular manuscript the main characters in it seem all-consuming … but by the time their book hits the shelves, I’m already focussing on new ones. In each novel there’s someone I find particularly fun to write. It’s usually the one with the fewest inhibitions, because a lot of the excitement in being a novelist is in living vicariously through your characters. In Dangerously Placed, that character was Kiyoko. She’s unashamedly academic and very self-confident, and her Goth style makes me nostalgic for the days when I had a wardrobe full of black and my fringe covered half of my face (or at least one lens of my nerdy round glasses – I wasn’t quite as stylish as Ki!).

I’ve also got a lot of affection for the guys in my books; I think it’d be difficult to write a guy your protagonist is going to fall in love with if you didn’t have a bit of a soft spot for him too! But I think the character who really burns brightest for me is the Gianna, one of the two main characters in the novel I wrote before Mishaps. She’s brilliant, fearless, beautiful, indecently rich and has major issues – what could be more fun than that? When a character means a lot to you, their story is always in the back of your mind. It’s my dream to one day polish that novel up until it burns as brightly as Gianna does.

Check out Nansi’s blogspot!

Kristin Cashore grew up in the countryside of north-eastern Pennsylvania in a village with cows and barns and beautiful views from the top of the hill. She lived in a rickety old house with her parents, three sisters, and a scattering of cats, and spent her days reading and daydreaming.

At 18 Kristin went off to college to Williams College in Williamstown.  Kristin spent a phenomenal year studying literature at Sydney University. After college. Kristin developed a compulsive moving problem: New York City, Boston, Cambridge, Austin, Pennsylvania, Italy, and even a short stint in London.

During her stint in Boston, Kristin got an M.A. at the Centre for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College which got her thinking and breathing YA books, and, got her writing.

Since Simmons, Kristin hasn’t stopped writing, not once. Kristin has been writing full-time for a bunch 8 years now, first doing educational writing for the K-6 market and now working on her novels.

 Kristin recently moved from Jacksonville, Florida, to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1. Kristin, you’ve said that your two favourite activities are reading and daydreaming, and that you view them as being fundamental to the writing process. Can you tell us how you think this process works.

Well, my writing generally starts with characters; characters are usually the seeds that take root in my mind and grow into book ideas that want me to write them. But where do these characters come from? I’m not really sure, but I think they sometimes come from the way my daydreams interact with stories I’m experiencing, or stories I already know. I’ll read a book, and maybe there’s something I dislike about the way one of its characters is portrayed—so I’ll imagine the character a bit differently in my daydreams.

Over time, the daydream will change, elaborate, grow, and before you know it, the character I started with has changed so much, and her friends, surroundings, and story have changed so much, that she’s an entirely new person living an entirely different life than the one I started with. She is fully mine now; or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she’s fully her own, but living in my head. That imaginary person in my daydreams might turn into the basis for one of my book ideas. (Not all the people in my daydreams do!)

Taking it one step further, let’s say that I have this character in mind for a book and now it’s book planning time.  Well, at that point, every book I read (and frankly every movie I watch and story I hear, fiction or nonfiction) is stirring up my imagination even more, and feeding my thought process. When I am writing a book and especially when I am planning a book, every single thing that happens in my life or even that brushes against my life is feeding the process.

It’s difficult to explain it cleanly and clearly, because it’s not a clean or clear process!  It’s a big mess, really, and manifests itself as mountains of paper and post-it notes—snippets of ideas written down—all over my house.

2. After enjoying great success with Graceling and Fire, you’re on to your third book. Is the process getting easier or more difficult? What new challenges have you been confronted with while writing the third novel?

In my experience, each book is harder than the last. I think—or at least, I hope—that this is because I’m growing as a writer, and subsequently find myself taking on a bigger, and more ambitious, challenge each time.  My third book, called Bitterblue (and now in revisions) was unquestionably the hardest of the three to write, and is proving to be the most difficult to revise, mostly because it has a more complicated plot than the others, it’s a bit longer, and the happenings and emotions I’m trying to convey within it are a little less solid and straightforward than in the previous two novels.

You could say that it’s a book about relationships and also about people’s inner lives. It’s much harder to write that sort of thing than to write a woman having a fight with a mountain lion! (Though please note that there are fights, and plenty of action, in Bitterblue, too! Readers who know Graceling and Fire know the kind of thing I tend to write, and this one follows suit.)

A smart writer friend of mine named Sandra McDonald (the author of the wonderful short story collection Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories) once told me that “each book teaches you the way it needs to be written.” Every time I start a new book, I remember how true this is.  Each book is its own creature, and each one surprises you with its demands.  I am often well into a book before I realize what I’ve gotten myself into. I am kind of at the book’s mercy at that point, and my commitment to the book, whatever it turns out to be, keeps me going.

3. What was your inspiration for the Seven Kingdoms?

The kingdoms came from the characters. The characters of Katsa, Po, and Raffin came to me first, and, in the case of Katsa and Po, they came to me with their special powers intact, so I knew I was dealing with a fantasy world. Beyond that, I would say that my setting grew from the requirements of my plot. I would also say that it grew a bit messily and haphazardly—it was my first fantasy novel, and at the time, I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I’ve been having fun picking up some loose ends, changing things around, and structuring things with a bit more care in my current work in progress, which also takes place in the seven kingdoms. When you write more than one book in the same fantasy universe, your later books always bear the burden of trying to correct mistakes you made in the previous books.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Probably Bitterblue, and probably because she’s the one I’m working on at the moment.  My readers might remember that she was ten years old in Graceling and in a distressing and dangerous position.  In my work in progress, called Bitterblue, she is eighteen years old and with a LOT on her plate.  I’m at the happy point in the writing of the book where I feel I have a handle on her, and it turns out I like her quite a lot. That doesn’t always happen with my characters! In fact, usually it’s the peripheral characters I’m fondest of, not the main characters, and its often a surprise which characters end up being most meaningful or dear to me.  It can be quite random—just like in real life.  For example, by the end of writing Fire, I found myself to be extremely fond of Nash.  I never saw that coming, because he was so unattractive to me at the beginning of writing the book!

Check out Kristin’s blog here!

(Author photo courtesy of Laura Evans)

Kate Gordon grew up in a very booky house, with two librarian parents, in a small town by the sea on the north-west coast of Tasmania. In 2009, Kate was the recipient of a Varuna writer’s fellowship. Her first book, Three Things About Daisy Blue – a young adult novel about travel, love, self-acceptance and letting go – was published in the Girlfriend series by Allen & Unwin in 2010. Now Kate lives with her husband and her very strange cat, Mephy Danger Gordon. Every morning, while Kate writes, Mephy Danger sits behind her on the couch with his tail curled around her neck. Kate was the recipient of a 2011 Arts Tasmania Assistance to Individuals grant, which means she can now spend more time losing herself in the world of Thylas and Sarcos. She is currently working on the sequel to Thyla.

You grew up in Tasmania, Kate, and continue to live there now. In what way do you think Tasmania’s geographic remoteness influences your work?

I think Tassie’s remoteness has definitely influenced my work – indirectly, at any rate. I think when you grow up in a place like Tasmania – particularly in a small town as I did – your imagination can take one of two paths. Either it can be closed off and limited and begin to imagine that wherever you live is all there is – that it’s the centre of the universe and nothing outside of it matters – or it can be sparked by the idea of what is outside of the small sphere you live in. one of my most embarrassing moments was when I met Isobelle Carmody, and I told her that (when I was really young), I thought her books were set on mainland Australia. I literally imagined that, outside of Tasmania, all of these magic worlds existed! She was very nice to me about it, thankfully! Lesser people might have had me thrown out of the book talk for being crazy! As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned more about Tasmania itself and all the parts of it that are unexplored and wild and that has really influenced my work. What is out there, in the forests, where nobody goes? We’re very luck living here. There aren’t many parts of the world that are unexplored. There’s an HP Lovecraft story called At the Mountains of Madness, that is set in Antarctica and imagines the lost worlds that could exist there, beyond what explorers had already mapped. Now, even Antarctica is all mapped out and known to us. I like the idea that there is still the “unknown” out there and I think it could very well be in Tasmania! On another level, growing up in a small town in Tasmania, you don’t really meet many other writers, so I guess that allows your writing to develop without outside influence. You can be a bit more creative in your approaches without other people telling you how to do it!

Can you tell us a bit about your early days writing and the impact that winning the Varuna fellowship had on you and your career? Do you go on writers’ retreats or get involved in writing groups these days?

I think Varuna is a fabulous organisation and they provide many good opportunities for both beginning and experienced writers. For me, the Varuna experience was maybe not as beneficial as it would be for others. I’m a bit stubborn, really, and I kind of like to do things my way (just ask my husband). I’ve never really thrived in environments where I’m given a prescription for how to work – not saying that Varuna does that at all. I think I was just in a place with my writing where I was really certain of how I wanted to work. It probably wasn’t the right way, but it was what worked for me! I’d love the opportunity to do it again now! I do like being in writer’s groups, though. I like being around other people who “get” what it’s like to be a writer – how all-consuming it can be and how you can go a bit bonkers at times! I do like having my work critiqued and edited, too (even though that seems to go against my previous statement). I like having new eyes give me new ideas or directions. I love having an inspiring editor give me new ideas for the plot and character. There’s nothing better than working with a brilliant editor, and I’ve been very lucky so far in that respect! I’ve just never found a “technique” or “method” that works for me. That’s why I don’t really read writing books. I have friends (who are very good writers) who swear by them, but I find when someone tells me how to write, I can’t. It makes me anxious!

Thyla is set in Tassie, and is described as a dark piece of writing. Thyla was ‘found in the bush, ragged as a wild thing’, lacking any memory of how she acquired the ‘long, striping slashes across (her) back’. How did you get in the mindset to create this character and the mystery that surrounds her?

When I was writing it, I never saw Thyla as a dark work. I’m still not sure that I do! I like to think it’s funny and really light in places! Although the Diemens could definitely be construed as “dark” characters. I’m still not sure how I managed to create them. When I read about them, they even scare me! It wasn’t difficult for me to get into the mindset of Tessa. I’ve never really had trouble writing characters. Plot I have a problem with, but I find characters easy! I think a lot of it has to do with my training as an actor. I did a uni degree in performing arts and a lot of the work we did followed the teachings of Stanislavsky, or “method acting”, I guess. We were taught that it’s important to know your character inside out – what they have for breakfast; their favourite film; their first childhood memory … I guess I do the same thing with characters. It might sound a bit mental but, when I’m working on something, part of the character is always with me, and they have a lot of say in which direction a book goes in. That’s why I’ve never been able to really plan my books before I start, because if I do the characters tend to decide halfway through that they don’t like that plan and they want to go in a different direction. I kind of just let them do their thing and hope they don’t do something stupid! I once made a work colleague think I’d gone off the deep end by coming back from my break having obviously been crying. When she asked what was wrong I told her I’d been writing at lunch time and one of my favourite characters had died. She didn’t get why that upset me so much! She thought I was in control over whether characters lived or died and that I would have known in advance. I had a hard time convincing her that, sometimes, I have no idea in advance what characters are going to do!

Which of all your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

That’s hard! It’s usually the character I’m working on at the time! At the moment I’m working on the third book in the Thyla series. It’s called Sarco and the main character is probably the most fun character I’ve ever written. She doesn’t take herself too seriously and she’d feisty and ballsy, and yet she’s also kind of insecure – when it comes to boys, especially. I’m really excited to see where her journey ends up! There’s a character in one of my manuscripts that hasn’t come out yet – her name is Molly – who is probably the closest in personality to me, and so she was the easiest to write and is probably the character I feel most strongly about. I hope people get to meet her one day! Daisy Blue and Paulina Gifford are both very close to my heart. They’re both based on different sides of me as a teenager and I spent a lot of time developing them. I hated each of them at various points and then fell in love with them again! And I do love Tessa, very much. She is so kind and sweet, but she has a fiery side to her, too, and a kooky sense of humour. Tessa is kind of the person I wish I could be! I once heard a writer say that asking her to pick her favourite character is like asking her to pick her favourite child. It’s impossible! That’s very much how it is for me, too!

Find out more about the fabulous Kate Gordon here!

Catch Kate’s tweeeeeeets over here!

Our review of Thyla is coming soon.

Sean Williams writes prolifically across the field of science fiction and fantasy, for adults, young adults and children, and enjoys the odd franchise, too, such as Star Wars and Doctor Who. His latest series is The Fixers, for 8-10 year-olds. His work has won awards, debuted at #1 on the New York Times hardback bestseller list, and been translated into numerous languages. He even writes the odd poem. Born in the dry, flat lands of South Australia, he still lives there with his wife and family, and DJs in his spare time.

Q. 1 You have a new children’s series, Troubletwisters, coming out soon, co-written with Garth Nix. I’ve seen the intriguing trailer on YouTube. Can you tell us more about it, and about the process of co-authoring this series? When we caught up with Garth, he said it was a lot of fun talking the story through over a Guinness or two with you!

The feeling is mutual!

Troubletwisters is about two young kids, Jack and Jaide, who are forced to move out into the country when their house explodes. They stay with their father’s mother, a woman they’ve never met, in a big old house and discover that their family has a secret history, a history that they’re about to become part of. There’s an evil force trying to take over the world–a force so evil it’s just called The Evil–and the only thing standing between it and ordinary people is a group called the Wardens. The twins might become Wardens one day, but first they have to survive The Evil and the unpredictable nature of their own powers. Young Wardens are called troubletwisters for a reason: you can never tell what will happen next.

So that’s the premise. Working out where the story goes from there has been an absolute blast. As well as the odd Guinness or Sea Breeze, Garth and I have whiled away many an hour on planes, in hotel rooms, in each other’s homes and offices, and over the phone, coming up with ideas and new adventures for our young heroes. We both grew up reading classic fantasy novels–Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Le Guin, etc–so we’re trying to capture the same sense of fun and wonder those books generated in us. If we’re enjoying it, hopefully readers will, too.

As far as practicalities go: we develop a detailed outline together, then Garth writes the opening chapter. I write the first draft. He writes the second. From there, we bounce it back and forth until it’s looking pretty well-rounded. Then it goes in to our publishers and another round of editing. There are surprises at every stage, which is one of the great joys of collaborating.

Q. 2 You’ve done a lot of work based on Star Wars. When did you initially become interested in Star Wars and what makes it a phenomenon so worth continuing to contribute to? Which are your favourite Star Wars characters?

I was ten years old when the Star Wars movie came out, so I’ve been a fan since then. Not an uncritical fan; there are some stories I have enjoyed more than others. But that’s okay. The shared universe is so huge now that there’s always something going on somewhere that will interest me. And that, I think, is to a large degree why I like working there. There’s a lot to explore, lots to discover. There are plenty of talented minds adding to it every day. It’s awesome to be among them.

Then there are the interesting challenges. My last three Star Wars novels were based on computer games, and adapting them to the page has been utterly fascinating. I mean, I love writing my own books, and the books with Garth and other writers, but working this way demands an approach that’s totally different. I figure we’ve always got to try new things as artists to keep us fresh, even though it can be nerve-wracking at times. If it wasn’t scary, it wouldn’t be pushing us to new heights.

Favorite character? Obi-wan Kenobi, probably. He’s the only character I’ve never written any lines for. That’s a box I plan to tick, one day.

Q. 3 What are the best elements of being a writer, for you, and what are the most challenging?

To my mind, it’s the best job in the world. A lot of what people call negatives–like being alone a lot of the time–are things I actually enjoy. I love the hours I keep, the quiet life indoors, the language, and the daydreaming I get to do as part of my job. I’m not quite so fond of the waiting, the crappy pay (sometimes), the RSI, or the travel, but I can live with all that as long as I get to do the fun part.

Q. 4 Which of all your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

I have a character called Render in my Astropolis series who speaks solely in Gary Numan lyrics. He’s well over a million years old and quite mad, but despite that (or because of it) he’ll always burn brightly for me.

It’d be hard to single out just one person from Troubletwisters, as they’re all so much fun. One of the cats, maybe. Or The Evil itself: bad guys get all the best lines . . . .

Click here for Sean’s website!

MUSIC: Gary Numan – Cars