Matt Posner's Blog: You've Been Schooled - Posts Tagged "interview"

In January, I did an interview for Book Link, an Indian publishing trade journal. When I originally replied to the great questions, I overshot the required length by double or more, so I cut it down. However, here is the full text of my original response.


Q. Some book names you have written in the US.

A. In the U.S., my School of the Ages series has three novels of a planned five, plus two short story books. The novels are The Ghost in the Crystal, Level Three’s Dream, and The War Against Love (which Vitasta will publish in the spring), and the short story books are Tales of Christmas Magic (mostly comic or warm stories about School of the Ages with a holiday feel) and Sara Ghost (which is a fifty-page story featuring School of the Ages characters confronting a mature social problem).
Also in the U.S., I have a book I co-authored with Jess C. Scott called Teen Guide to Sex and Relationships. This is a book for teenagers, not for children. This book does not have an Indian publisher. I would like to find one someday, though. If E.L. James’ ridiculous book Fifty Shades of Grey, which offers a nonsensical, offensively stupid view of sexuality, can be a big success in the Indian market, then why not a book which tells the truth about sex and romance?

Q. Age/any personal info--if you have children---because you are writing children's/young adult books.

a.I was born in 1969, shortly before the moon landing, so I am now 43 years old. I do not have children of my own, but I am a teacher, so I have a lot of young people in my life and I get a chance alternately to help and care for them, or to make their lives miserable with homework.

Q. Any hobbies?

A. I have hobbies, yes: too many, in fact. You will probably find me on my iPad with games a lot of the time. Reading obviously is a high priority. At other times I focus on the hobbies I can share with my wife, which are foreign travel, photography, and watching movies.

Q: Even before the Harry Potter series, magic has been something the world (adult writers and young adult readers) is obsessed with. Lewis Carroll’s book ... Some of Tolkien characters show extraordinary powers .Even before that Grimm’s and Anderson’s tales.... mention magic powers...what made you zero in on another Magic School book?

A. I have always been interested in reading and writing about magic. You mention Lewis Carroll, knowing, I am sure, that I am a huge fan, as shown by the fact that in Level Three’s Dream, my teen magic students go into Lewis Carroll’s worlds, and meet the characters from the Alice books. Tolkien likewise is a childhood love of mine and is usually the first author I mention as an influence. These are two of the writers who have most made me want to write about magic. I grew up reading books of this kind. The 1980s was a boom period for heroic fantasy. Long before Harry Potter, I had read Leguin’s Earthsea books, one of which features a magic school, and I had read books about apprentice wizards, such as the Belgariad by David Eddings. Bringing my interest in magic to a school was a natural decision for me, since I’m a teacher. I started Ghost in the Crystal while the Harry Potter series was still being written.

Q: How will you counter arguments that adult writers are filling children's heads with magic---hocus pocus fiction instead of rational/scientific logical thinking by such books?

A. No one has asked me that before! I think I am aiming at building a complex world view that does not exclude science or rationality. My magic students take science lessons. In Ghost in the Crystal, one of the magic school teachers talks to my protagonist Simon about atomic theory and cosmology. The fact is that the scientific world is now finally finding ways to incorporate the paranormal into its discourse.
I think there is another counter to the argument you mentioned. That counter is that components of dream and imagination are necessary for proper development of young minds. You can’t be scientific and rational all the time or you will not be a well-balanced person. Reading about magic didn’t stop me from earning top marks in my high school and college, and literature that is about magic, even Potter, is still literature, and as literature, still teaches values such as friendship and responsibility. The huge success of the movie 3 Idiots shows that I am not alone in feeling that a strict focus on rationality and achievement can have devastating consequences.
The West has been engaged since the Middle Ages in the battle between reason and emotion, with the intellectual pendulum swinging between, say, Scholasticism and Humanism; the Enlightenment and Romanticism; and so on. I don’t feel the need to occupy one position in the debate. I’m on both sides.

Q: J.K. Rowling is British. Your character can be called an American Harry Potter. What made you come to an Indian publisher? Will the two magic school books be accepted by the American reader?

A. Simon, my protagonist, isn’t Harry Potter. He’s not a chosen one, nor is he a hard-scrabbling orphan. He’s a young person with unusual abilities, certainly, but his struggles are personal and have to do with being young, growing up, and dealing with loss and responsibility as all kids have to. I have never read about any other magical youths like this. They always have a destiny or a great mission, as does Harry Potter or does Simon’s closest equivalent, who is not Harry, but Luke Skywalker. (This will be more obvious to readers who have been through Book III.) Simon has adventures with his friends, but he is just a kid growing up.
Will the magic school books be accepted by the American reader? Marketing in the U.S. is very hard. But I have NO bad reviews, which is rare for an independent self-publisher like me.
I came to an Indian publisher because of my feelings of affinity for India and my sense of untapped business potential. In the former situation, my wife is from India and I have many friends there as well as relations by marriage. I grew up reading Amar Chitra Katha and admiring Ram and Hanuman, and my father is a follower of Vedanta. So there are emotional and intellectual connections for me. In practical terms, I have pursued opportunities in India because I feel it is a growing market for English-language books that has not been foregrounded by American authors as it should be. Most English-language books in India by foreign authors are part of the distribution network of multinational publishers, but why should it be that way? The world’s largest democracy is a business environment in which a writer like me, who is not affiliated with the Big Six publishers, can partner with Indian-owned publishers like Vitasta to carve out a lucrative market share.

Q: Houdini--Hungary...Bohemia...Egypt...India are countries associated with snake charmers and vanishing tricks. Isn't it time a school of magic is situated in the orient and the central character an oriental...why don't authors think of such interesting placements for books on magic ...even if written in English? ( India being 3rd biggest English publishing industry).

My protagonist, Simon, is one-quarter Indian. His father has an Indian mother. My books are set in New York because I live in New York, but the school has several Indian teachers and students and includes meditation. In Ghost in the Crystal a scene is set during a Vasant Panchami Puja. Simon will be visiting India in book IV as he meets his large extended family there (his grandmother, five uncles, and countless cousins) and confronts Indian villains, all in Mumbai.
I don’t use the term Orient myself, but if you mean to ask whether a magic school belongs in India, sure, I’m up for reading that. Maybe, inspired by your remarks, I will include the famous “rope trick” in an upcoming scene. As for the other names you mentioned... Houdini was my third cousin, I think, on my father’s mother’s side. I have characters from Hungary in the third School of the Ages book, and I visited that country this past April. Finally, I would love to use Egypt in the future, but I haven’t visited and it isn’t too safe to visit because of all the political upheaval there these days.

4: As a writer of children's fiction....how do you know your story will sell? Who do you run the stories with first? How long did it take you to write the two books with Vitasta?

A. I don’t know what will sell. That’s a matter of marketing. If you put my books on display in a bookstore, they will sell out. Both young people and adults like to read about magic.

I don’t really run the books by anyone. My wife reads them, and whomever else I can ask, but overall, an author has to trust himself these days. Professional editors are expensive and don’t always understand what’s best for a text. Ghost in the Crystal was begun in early 2002 and took seven years to write because of long gaps in the composition. The other books in the series take two to three years each, but they are overlapping, by which I mean that I have written more than one book at a time. Presently I am a good part of the way through book IV, and book V, which I will start next year, will be unique in that I will be writing it without any other in the series also in process.

Q, what was the most difficult part of it?

To write, I need a large block of time so that I can, so to speak, expand into the task, by clearing my mind of distractions and devote myself fully to the creative process. I can’t write when I have calls to make or papers to grade or tiresome personal obligations hanging over my head. So the most difficult part isn’t a technical issue, but a practical one. When can I clear the time to focus properly?

5:How do you compare children's reading habits in the US with that of India.

A. Kids in the United States are reading more than ever before by volume, but paradoxically, as a teacher I am still struggling to get them to read. If you find something American kids will read, the reading-oriented portion of American youths will devour what they like, ranging from Rowling to Rick Riordan to Stephenie Meyer to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. However, a lot of American kids don’t touch books because electronic devices occupy them utterly.

I believe kids in India like to read the same things American kids like to read, but I am hoping the fixation upon electronic devices is less pronounced in the subcontinent. I am hoping that. I don’t know.

6. Any ideas on translating your two magic school books into Mandarin? Any Indian language?

I don’t have the skill to translate but I would be glad to work with a translator if the opportunity arose. I am disinclined to publish in China because of the unrestrained piracy there. I would welcome translation of my work into Hindi, Tamil, and Telegu.

7: What is going to be your next/forthcoming project?

Vitasta is publishing School of the Ages #3, The War Against Love, early next year. And I am still writing School of the Ages #4, Simon Myth.