Ask the Author: Mike Carey
Answered Questions (20)
Mike Carey
Hi Christopher. Thanks for the kind words. I'm really glad you enjoyed the book. What happened was that we fell between two stools - or rather two publishers. Peter and I created Highest House for a French publisher, Editions Glenat. Glenat then sold the US license to IDW. The series did very badly in France, where only one volume (the first two chapters of the story) were ever published. We got a better reception in the US, and we decided to write a second volume (chapters 7-12) either with IDW or if they weren't interested then self-funded and self-published. We wrote to Glenat asking for a reversion of the rights, but they weren't very helpful. For a long time they said the decision was pending. Then eventually when we kept on asking they fell silent. More recently we got back in touch with our editor on the book, Olivier Jalabert, and found that he was no longer at Glenat. We've been unable to find out who is in charge of the property there now, and we're still not getting any response to emails and written letters. So at the moment we can't write new material or reprint the original book. We're stonewalled. We had all kinds of ideas for the next chapters, and maybe some day we'll get to finish the story, but sadly it feels as though it's unlikely to be soon.
Mike Carey
Sadly, The Ghost in Bone had pretty disappointing sales. I'd love to continue the story, but I need to find someone who'll publish it. Still trying!
Mike Carey
Thank you, Rayne! I'm really glad you enjoyed the book. There *is* a huge amount of genre fiction out there. My own favourites (among current writers) include Adrian Tchaikovsky, Claire North, Micaiah Johnson and Natasha Pulley.
Mike Carey
Sorry! And I hope you enjoy the novella. I haven't been very good at maintaining the profile here and I don't have a website any more, so sometimes things fall through the gaps. There'll hopefully be more Castor in the near future. I've got two more novellas planned, adding up when they're done to the sixth novel...
Mike Carey
I wish there *were* any mysteries in my life! Honestly, I have a very mundane existence. Back when I was a kid my mum used to see ghosts all the time, in every house we lived in, but none of the rest of us did.
The most fertile ground would probably be the time when I lived in a very old, very strange block of flats in Muswell Hill. Nothing actually happened that was out of the ordinary, but at least it was a suitably atmospheric setting...
The most fertile ground would probably be the time when I lived in a very old, very strange block of flats in Muswell Hill. Nothing actually happened that was out of the ordinary, but at least it was a suitably atmospheric setting...
Mike Carey
Thanks! I'm glad you've been enjoying the books. I'm working on a new series which is sci-fi but not post-apocalyptic. It's about alternate universes where different species ended up as the dominant life forms on Earth - very much in the same vein as Adrian Tchaikovsky's Doors Of Eden, although very different in tone and setting. The title of the first book in the sequence will probably be Infinity Gate. I'm also working on a haunted house novella for Absinthe and a movie screenplay based on one of my earlier novels.
Mike Carey
See previous answer (just posted). I really want to finish the series, but I won't make any glib promises. I'll do it if I can do it justice...
Mike Carey
I hope so! It's been hard to get that conversation going. At the moment, M.R.Carey sells a lot better than Mike ever did, which means my publishers are more interested in stuff that will go to press under that name. I have plans for the sixth book, but they were drawn up a long time ago. I think I'd have to start from scratch and see how they hold up. I'd also have to think myself back into the right mind set, and get used to Castor's voice again. None of these are reasons not to do it, they're just hurdles I've got to jump.
On another level entirely, I'm a little worried about accidental revisionism. Sometimes when you come back to a series after a long absence, your perspective has changed in ways that become problematic. I did a blog post here on Goodreads about exactly this. If I felt that was happening, I think I'd have to abandon the effort rather than write a Castor novel that felt like a fake or a pastiche...
On another level entirely, I'm a little worried about accidental revisionism. Sometimes when you come back to a series after a long absence, your perspective has changed in ways that become problematic. I did a blog post here on Goodreads about exactly this. If I felt that was happening, I think I'd have to abandon the effort rather than write a Castor novel that felt like a fake or a pastiche...
Mike Carey
If I'm invited back, definitely. I really love the miniseries format. It's a big enough canvas to open up and push an idea to its limits, but it has a definite end point. And working with Joe was great. He offered ideas and suggestions, kept a handle on all the stages of development but let each book be its own thing.
Mike Carey
I'm probably not ever going to write a monthly continuity book again. It's a big commitment, and I don't have the bandwidth to do that. But I've been hugely excited at what's happening in the X-books since Jonathan Hickman took over. It would be cool to do a miniseries against that backdrop. The trick, as always, is making the timing work...
Mike Carey
Hi Rhuddem. It's pretty svelte. I'm sure we can work something out.
Mike Carey
Until recently, I would most likely have answered this question with that old line about how plumbers aren't allowed to get plumber's block, so writers shouldn't have it any different. You just do the job that's in front of you.
But there are definitely times when you reach a brick wall, and there's no point just pushing against it in the hope that it will give. You've got to go away and do something else for a while - let yourself get distracted, while some hidden sub-routine in your brain keeps worrying at the problem without showing the rest of you its workings. If you're lucky, when you sit down in front of your keyboard again you'll see the outlines of an answer.
This is especially true late at night. Sometimes I'll reach an impasse at the end of an evening's work, and the temptation is to keep going. Don't give up. Solve this thing before you go to bed. But you just get more and more exhausted and unproductive, and you're just taking your edge off for the next day too. It's better to back off. At the very least you'll be sharper the next day. You may also find that you've got a different perspective.
But there are definitely times when you reach a brick wall, and there's no point just pushing against it in the hope that it will give. You've got to go away and do something else for a while - let yourself get distracted, while some hidden sub-routine in your brain keeps worrying at the problem without showing the rest of you its workings. If you're lucky, when you sit down in front of your keyboard again you'll see the outlines of an answer.
This is especially true late at night. Sometimes I'll reach an impasse at the end of an evening's work, and the temptation is to keep going. Don't give up. Solve this thing before you go to bed. But you just get more and more exhausted and unproductive, and you're just taking your edge off for the next day too. It's better to back off. At the very least you'll be sharper the next day. You may also find that you've got a different perspective.
Mike Carey
I'm going to quote a writer friend of mine, without attribution. "There's nothing in the whole world like seeing the words inside your head become the light in someone else's eyes." When a reader gets pleasure out of a story you wrote, and tells you so, you feel like the king of creation. Of course it's also great to get *paid* for telling stories. I mean, how did that even happen?
Mike Carey
There are three things that are really basic and really important. It may feel like I'm stating the obvious, but I think between them they make up a massive part of what you need to progress as a writer.
1. Read. Read as much as you possibly can, especially in the genre or medium where you want to write. You can't write anything, in my opinion, if you're not also an avid and enthusiastic reader or consumer of that thing. If you don't read comics, don't try to write them. If you don't read sci-fi, don't set yourself up as a sci-fi writer. Any medium and any genre is an ongoing conversation, conducted through all the things that have already been written in that medium or genre . If you're not part of the conversation, you put yourself at a massive disadvantage if you just wade in with your own offering without listening first.
2. Write as much as you can. Writing is a mechanical skill, like riding a bike or juggling. You get better at it by practising.
3. Get people to give you their opinions on your writing. Other people's opinions are the rear-view mirrors that let you see into your own blind spots. Writers' groups are great for this.
Obviously everybody's situation is different, but I think these are important first principles for anyone who wants to write and be published. If you're just writing for your own pleasure, then you can make up your own rules as you go along and be beholden to no-one!
1. Read. Read as much as you possibly can, especially in the genre or medium where you want to write. You can't write anything, in my opinion, if you're not also an avid and enthusiastic reader or consumer of that thing. If you don't read comics, don't try to write them. If you don't read sci-fi, don't set yourself up as a sci-fi writer. Any medium and any genre is an ongoing conversation, conducted through all the things that have already been written in that medium or genre . If you're not part of the conversation, you put yourself at a massive disadvantage if you just wade in with your own offering without listening first.
2. Write as much as you can. Writing is a mechanical skill, like riding a bike or juggling. You get better at it by practising.
3. Get people to give you their opinions on your writing. Other people's opinions are the rear-view mirrors that let you see into your own blind spots. Writers' groups are great for this.
Obviously everybody's situation is different, but I think these are important first principles for anyone who wants to write and be published. If you're just writing for your own pleasure, then you can make up your own rules as you go along and be beholden to no-one!
Mike Carey
I'm working on three projects right now. One is a TV series that may or may not ever happen. It sort of depends on what shape the industry is in when the lockdown ends, so I'm writing it with no expectations at all. Also, it hasn't been announced anywhere so I can't say too much about it, beyond - old (very old) fantasy property, amazingly never made into a movie or show, originally written by a genre legend.
I'm also in the early stages of planning for a new novel which is fairly close in tone and themes to Highest House, the comic book series I did with Peter Gross. It's about convict labour in a fantastic setting.
And finally I'm assembling the architecture for a shared universe anthology, along with my wife and all our kids. This is something that probably won't ever get published. We're just doing it for our own amusement and to stay sane in lockdown.
I'm also in the early stages of planning for a new novel which is fairly close in tone and themes to Highest House, the comic book series I did with Peter Gross. It's about convict labour in a fantastic setting.
And finally I'm assembling the architecture for a shared universe anthology, along with my wife and all our kids. This is something that probably won't ever get published. We're just doing it for our own amusement and to stay sane in lockdown.
Mike Carey
It's just something I've always done. I think it's fair to say that I do it because I don't know how not to do it. But I didn't start earning my living from it until I was in my mid-thirties. Before that I was a teacher (and very briefly an accountant).
I like stories, and they're a big part of my life. Whenever an idea strikes me or I learn something new, I'm immediately turning it over in my mind to see how you could hang a story on it. So the inspiration could come out of anything, no matter how small or trivial. I'm working on a story at the moment that grew out of a line of poetry - I mean, somebody else's poetry. It's the line "cloistered in these living walls of jet" from John Donne's The Flea. I teased out an idea and then kept building on it. It's not about fleas any more...
I like stories, and they're a big part of my life. Whenever an idea strikes me or I learn something new, I'm immediately turning it over in my mind to see how you could hang a story on it. So the inspiration could come out of anything, no matter how small or trivial. I'm working on a story at the moment that grew out of a line of poetry - I mean, somebody else's poetry. It's the line "cloistered in these living walls of jet" from John Donne's The Flea. I teased out an idea and then kept building on it. It's not about fleas any more...
Mike Carey
It was one of those situations (like Girl With All the Gifts) where I wrote a short story for an anthology and then kept on playing around with the voice and the concepts. The short in this case was called All That's Red Earth, and I wrote it for a PS Publishing collection called Weird Winter Tales. It's a million miles from what Koli eventually became, but that was how it all started. All the furniture of Koli's world - the feral vegetation, the legacy tech, the Ramparts - was built around the idea of Koli as a character and the naive, earnest voice I'd given him.
Mike Carey
"You need to let me inside," the cracked voice whined in my ear. The fevered scratching at the side of my temple intensified.
Mike Carey
Oh man, that's hard! So many choices. I think I'd have to go for the world (sorry, universe) of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. An anarchist utopia would make a refreshing change from the current political scene - and there would just be so many possibilities. No disease or war, no poverty. So many worlds and wonders to see that you'd grow old and die before you sampled even a tiny fraction of them. Except that you could choose NOT to grow old and die. Yeah, that would have to be my first option. The second would be something silly and nostalgic and slightly dubious like the world of the Borrowers books. It's so beautifully and lovingly rendered, even if it's also parochial and tiny and perilous...
Mike Carey
I'm re-reading Hilary Mantel's first two Cromwell books as a run-up to reading the third. Very excited about that. Plus I've got Steven Hall's second novel (long-awaited) sitting here in galley proof form. Plus N.K.Jemisin's The City We Became. And I just scored a copy of the second volume of Jeremy Love's Bayou, a venerable antique that's really hard to find...
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