Ask the Author: M.R. Carey
Answered Questions (12)
M.R. Carey
I think the challenge when you're writing in a well established sub-genre like this is that there are about a million things that have become part of the furniture. Every genre generates its own cliches, in other words. And if you use too many of the cliches then you're sort of imaginatively impoverishing your world. Encouraging the reader to go into default mode by going into it yourself! I did a few things to try to stop this from happening.
One relatively trivial thing was to avoid the actual word "zombie". Some readers have complained that if we ever did get a zombie plague in real life, there would be no way around it. It's just implausible to imagine that any other word would be used. But by saying "hungries" or "walkers" or "infected" or "meatbags" or whatever (all terms actually used in zombie novels), you put up a very slight conceptual barricade. You pull the reader away - well, maybe you do - from just letting their mind fill up with familiar iconography.
Much more importantly, I tried to make my zombies look and behave differently from zombies in other stories. Rather than either shambling or running, the hungries in GIRL have a stop mode and a go mode, which makes them less human and perhaps more insectile or reptilian in their mannerisms. It's only when we look at them through Melanie's eyes that we get the "there but for the grace of God go I" insight. She sees them as haunted houses.
Can you explain what you mean by the two stages?
One relatively trivial thing was to avoid the actual word "zombie". Some readers have complained that if we ever did get a zombie plague in real life, there would be no way around it. It's just implausible to imagine that any other word would be used. But by saying "hungries" or "walkers" or "infected" or "meatbags" or whatever (all terms actually used in zombie novels), you put up a very slight conceptual barricade. You pull the reader away - well, maybe you do - from just letting their mind fill up with familiar iconography.
Much more importantly, I tried to make my zombies look and behave differently from zombies in other stories. Rather than either shambling or running, the hungries in GIRL have a stop mode and a go mode, which makes them less human and perhaps more insectile or reptilian in their mannerisms. It's only when we look at them through Melanie's eyes that we get the "there but for the grace of God go I" insight. She sees them as haunted houses.
Can you explain what you mean by the two stages?
M.R. Carey
Hi Doreen. No, I studied literature at university. I do *read* a lot of popular science books - including pretty much everything that Stephen Jay Gould has written, and more recently the utterly splendid Parasite Rex, by Carl Zimmer. I think some of that stuff (especially the Jay Gould essays) is hovering in the background of GIRL.
M.R. Carey
Thanks, Susan. See other answers. A sequel isn't likely - it feels like it would have to be a very different kind of book from GIRL, because the world has changed so much by the end of the book. But in other news, we're getting along really well with the movie version!
M.R. Carey
Hi Ang. See other replies. No immediate plans for a sequel or a prequel, but a meanwhile-quel remains a possibility...
M.R. Carey
No immediate plans for a sequel, Jennifer. I would love at some points to write a meanwhile-quel, set in Beacon at the same time as the events of GIRL. But that would be some way in the future: I have at least two other books to write first.
Obviously it's left as a very open question what happens to the children next. In my head, Miss Justineau lives long enough to give them the same sort of education that Melanie has had. She becomes the link between the old world and the new. There is actually an additional chapter, which I excised from the book but which is available (I think) on the Facebook page. It picks up a couple of years after the end of GIRL and gives a glimpse of how things might have gone...
Obviously it's left as a very open question what happens to the children next. In my head, Miss Justineau lives long enough to give them the same sort of education that Melanie has had. She becomes the link between the old world and the new. There is actually an additional chapter, which I excised from the book but which is available (I think) on the Facebook page. It picks up a couple of years after the end of GIRL and gives a glimpse of how things might have gone...
M.R. Carey
Hi Zafir. I hadn't heard of The Last Of Us until after I'd finished writing GIRL (which is probably just as well). A friend has now loaned me her copy, and I'm going to break it out soon and play it. The truth is that I almost never play modern console games. I have a PS3, but I only use it for Netflix access. The games I play are 80s arcade games with very simple graphics...
Yes, I think that after Melanie's fight with the painted-faced boy, the other feral children see her very much as their new chief.
Yes, I think that after Melanie's fight with the painted-faced boy, the other feral children see her very much as their new chief.
M.R. Carey
Hi Ta. I've actually written nine other novels, but all under other names. The Felix Castor novels, as Mike Carey. Two thrillers as Adam Blake. And two fantasy novels as one third of Mike, Linda and Louise Carey...
M.R. Carey
Hi William. I have to admit, the only Herbert I've read is the Dune sequence of novels. I didn't know he'd written on the Pandora legend (so I guess the answer to your question is no). Would you recommend those books?
M.R. Carey
Sorry for the long delay in replying to this, Ami. I've got lots of favourites, but one of them is certainly Rogue. I love her passion and her absolute refusal to compromise. She is who she is and she goes her own way. It's always the mavericks and the misfits in a team book that make it for me. Having said that, I'm also really fond of the classic iteration of Cyclops - emotionally buttoned up, self-denying and desperately damaged.
M.R. Carey
I think one of the reasons for that, Vesper, is that I'd just completed a novel where I was co-writing with my wife, Linda, and our daughter Louise. Most of the characters in that book, The City of Silk and Steel, are female, and I enjoyed writing the dynamics of those relationships. I was still in that head-space when I came to write GIRL, and choosing a female protagonist and point of view character felt like a natural and unforced choice.
Of course the other half of your question is why a child - and that arises of necessity from the nature of the story. It's really a coming of age narrative as much as anything else, and Melanie's changing perspective on the world and her place in it is a big part of the point.
The hardest part for me was writing the scene in which Dr Caldwell attempts to dissect Melanie. It was challenging in the sense that I found it hard to put that sequence of events into words. My mind wanted to slip away from it.
Of course the other half of your question is why a child - and that arises of necessity from the nature of the story. It's really a coming of age narrative as much as anything else, and Melanie's changing perspective on the world and her place in it is a big part of the point.
The hardest part for me was writing the scene in which Dr Caldwell attempts to dissect Melanie. It was challenging in the sense that I found it hard to put that sequence of events into words. My mind wanted to slip away from it.
M.R. Carey
Easier to start that list than to stop it, Željko. I think my influences probably run into the hundreds. In no particular order, but close to the top of the list: Ursula LeGuin, Roger Zelazny, China Mieville, Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, Gene Wolfe, Terry Pratchett, Lawrence Sterne, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Vonda McIntyre, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman. And way back when I was first starting to read, Enid Blyton.
Best novel I've read recently: NOS4R2 by Joe Hill.
Best novel I've read recently: NOS4R2 by Joe Hill.
M.R. Carey
Hi Figgy. Yeah, there are several. I've had a few years of being wildly prolific, so there are a lot of other books out there and more coming. I don't know if you've checked out the Felix Castor novels. There are five of those, starting with The Devil You Know. They're more firmly rooted in genre than GIRL, and they have a first person narrator. Think Chandler-style noir, but with an exorcist rather than a detective.
I wrote two mainstream thrillers as Adam Blake. To be honest, they're in a mold that's very reminiscent of Dan Brown, and they have the worst titles in the history of literature, but the second one in particular (The Demon Code) has a father-daughter relationship that I think came out very well and said what I wanted to say.
But the closest things I've written to GIRL are the two books where I was co-writing with my wife, Linda, and our daughter Louise - The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness. The first is a sort of Arabian Nights pastiche where the women of a harem forge themselves into an army after a violent coup in the city where they live reduces them to outcasts and renegades. The second is a ghost story set against the backdrop of a turbulent period in European history. It just came out a week or so ago.
And I'm almost done with the next M.R.Carey novel, which is tentatively entitled Who By Fire. Expect a 2015 release on that one...
I wrote two mainstream thrillers as Adam Blake. To be honest, they're in a mold that's very reminiscent of Dan Brown, and they have the worst titles in the history of literature, but the second one in particular (The Demon Code) has a father-daughter relationship that I think came out very well and said what I wanted to say.
But the closest things I've written to GIRL are the two books where I was co-writing with my wife, Linda, and our daughter Louise - The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness. The first is a sort of Arabian Nights pastiche where the women of a harem forge themselves into an army after a violent coup in the city where they live reduces them to outcasts and renegades. The second is a ghost story set against the backdrop of a turbulent period in European history. It just came out a week or so ago.
And I'm almost done with the next M.R.Carey novel, which is tentatively entitled Who By Fire. Expect a 2015 release on that one...
M.R. Carey
Hi Kim. It grew out of a very specific commission. I’d agreed to write a short story for an anthology of dark fantasy and horror on the theme of “school days”. Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner were editing, and I’d had to back out of their previous collection because of time problems, so I was determined not to miss the boat again.
But having said I’d do it, I couldn’t come up with a single workable idea. The deadline started to loom, and everything that came into my head was sort of a grimdark Harry Potter riff – not the slightest bit original, and not appealing either.
Then I woke up one morning with the idea of Melanie in my mind. There was no story, to start with – there was just her. This little girl sitting in a classroom, writing an essay about what she was going to do when she grew up. Only that was never going to happen because she was already dead and didn’t know it.
Everything flowed from that first image, and it flowed really quickly. I wrote the short story, Iphigenia In Aulis, in four days, and for two of those I was in Norway for a comics convention. It was one of those rare situations where the story obsesses you so much that you use every spare moment to write some more of it down. I was sneaking away to the hotel room in between panels to add a few more paragraphs, and writing in bed before I got up to shower.
And once the short was done, I had the very strong feeling that the story wasn’t. I persuaded my editors at Orbit to vary out my contract so I could write The Girl With All the Gifts. Fortunately they were really flexible and helpful. Of course, it helped that they were sold on the story.
But having said I’d do it, I couldn’t come up with a single workable idea. The deadline started to loom, and everything that came into my head was sort of a grimdark Harry Potter riff – not the slightest bit original, and not appealing either.
Then I woke up one morning with the idea of Melanie in my mind. There was no story, to start with – there was just her. This little girl sitting in a classroom, writing an essay about what she was going to do when she grew up. Only that was never going to happen because she was already dead and didn’t know it.
Everything flowed from that first image, and it flowed really quickly. I wrote the short story, Iphigenia In Aulis, in four days, and for two of those I was in Norway for a comics convention. It was one of those rare situations where the story obsesses you so much that you use every spare moment to write some more of it down. I was sneaking away to the hotel room in between panels to add a few more paragraphs, and writing in bed before I got up to shower.
And once the short was done, I had the very strong feeling that the story wasn’t. I persuaded my editors at Orbit to vary out my contract so I could write The Girl With All the Gifts. Fortunately they were really flexible and helpful. Of course, it helped that they were sold on the story.
M.R. Carey
Hi Susie. Yeah, it's that. GIRL represented a big jump in tone and approach for me, and publishers always see that as a sort of crisis-in-waiting in terms of persuading bookstores to order in the book. Authors with much higher profiles than mine have run foul of that problem. So twice now I've switched names in order to advertise the different between a new project and older works. The first time was when I was (briefly) Adam Blake. And the second time is now, for GIRL and the two books that will follow it.
It hadn't occurred to me that using initials made my gender ambiguous, but of course it does. That wasn't a factor in the decision. In fact, the initials thing blew up in our faces a little bit. My real middle initial is J, and the first proofs went out with M.J.Carey as the author. Then we discovered the other M.J.Carey who writes bondage erotica...
It hadn't occurred to me that using initials made my gender ambiguous, but of course it does. That wasn't a factor in the decision. In fact, the initials thing blew up in our faces a little bit. My real middle initial is J, and the first proofs went out with M.J.Carey as the author. Then we discovered the other M.J.Carey who writes bondage erotica...
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Dec 07, 2014 12:24PM · flag
Dec 07, 2014 03:00PM · flag
As mentioned I th ...more
Dec 11, 2014 12:58PM · flag