Matt London's Blog

Layoff-uary 2024 has left me with two profound revelations.
Read to the end, because there is job hunt advice in here.
The search for my next role has emboldened and encouraged me in ways I never thought possible. Seven interviews and four catch up calls this week alone. I’m proud of my hustle. I’m grateful for so many taking an interest in me. Through all these conversations, I see the same things over and over.
1. The industry is rallying around the people caught up in this big RIF like never before. The sympathy and kindness I have seen from recruiters and hiring managers is profound. People want to help. They are trying so hard to help. When I see that, it fills me with so much hope, and I know it’s going to be okay for everyone affected.
2. If you have been impacted, people can hear you’re hurting. The bitterness, frustration, and even more negative emotions come through in your tone of voice, your choice of words, even your posture on a video call. I know you’re not directing this negativity at the people you’re interviewing with, who are trying to help you, but you might be inadvertently aiming it in their direction. Remember, these folks want to help you. They want you to be the perfect candidate for their open role. Show them the positivity and kindness that they are showing you. It will help your search, trust me.

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It has been a super busy few weeks, but I wanted to share some of the awesome that has been going on as I’ve toured for The 8th Continent: Welcome to the Jungle.

Our trip began in Austin, my old hometown. We had a great lineup of events, all of which I found to be eye-opening and moving.

Monday April 6th we had a fantastic school visit at West Ridge Middle School. West Ridge was where I attended 6th, 7th, and 8th grade way back when Altavista was my search engine of choice and The Rosie O’Donnell show was must-see TV. I spoke to about 100 students about the book and the garbage patch, then met in small groups with other students. One of my former teachers, Carol Reese, teaches a program that is very similar in structure to the graduate program I went to at NYU. The coolest thing I saw there was a student project that looked like Rick and Evie might have made it.



That is a very comfy chair made out of crushed water bottles and lined with recycled plastic cushions. So awesome!

Tuesday was the event at BookPeople, a very cool indie bookstore in Austin, TX. After the reading, I spoke to a budding young writer and West Ridge student who had missed the Monday event. I gave her two pieces of advice that I would encourage all aspiring writers to follow. First, write swiftly. It doesn’t matter if your writing is good, as long as you’re writing. Writing is like playing the piano — you have to make a lot of noise before you get good. Second, finish something! It’s hard to evaluate a story that doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end. So get started and get finished!

Me reading at BookPeople

Wednesday I did two workshops at Barton Creek Elementary. They were very nice and gave me so much time with the students. We got to do writing exercises and have great discussions about the garbage patch. The students were eager to get their books autographed (I signed A LOT of copies) and the faculty seemed very pleased.

Everyone wanted to get their books signed!

On Wednesday night I flew to Philadelphia for more book events. On Thursday the good folks at Children’s Book World took me to Shipley Lower School and Scenic Hills Elementary, where I was warmly welcomed.

The library made this sweet board for me!

School visits are amazing, and it’s always a treat to hear the students’ great ideas about how we can clean up the garbage patch.

After that whirlwind, I returned home, pooped but happy. I needed the rest, because Earth Day was coming up, and I had big things planned.

On Earth Day I did a book event at Horace Mann, a school in New York where I teach Minecraft and Video Game Design after school classes. It was a blast! We brainstormed ways to clean up the garbage patch, and how to reduce its spread. I’m confident one of these bright young people is going to figure out how to clean up the oceans once and for all.

It’s been quite an adventure, and there are many more school visits in my future. There’s nothing like meeting with students face to face.

The post A Whirlwind Tour appeared first on Matt London.

Get excited, continent fans! Over on Twitter, there’s a big ole giveaway happening as part of #mgMarch. Today’s my big special day, and you retweet for a chance to receive free copies of both THE 8TH CONTINENT and THE 8TH CONTINENT: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. If this doesn’t knock your socks off, then clearly you’ve been building up a high tolerance to hot stuff with a steady diet of jalapeno hot dogs.

Here’s the tweet:

What would you put on your continent? Retweet this for a chance to receive THE 8TH CONTINENT books 1 and 2! #mgMarch

— Matt London (@themattlondon) March 24, 2015

Now go retweet! These copies ain’t gonna give away themselves!

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On a crisp Tuesday not unlike today, exactly six months ago, I embarked on two simultaneous journeys. First, I started working as an honest-to-goodness teacher — a fulfilling and marvelous experience that I’m still trying to process — and second, my debut novel The 8th Continent was published.

It’s hard to overstate what a monumental deal this was for me. I had been telling stories for pleasure as long as I could talk. I finished the first draft of my first novel when I was just sixteen years old. After years of hard work and rejection, reflection and persistence, I started selling things. People started hiring me to write more. But there were still struggles. More opportunities meant more rejections, too.

In 2005, I began actively seeking the publication of a novel I wrote, which means that I’ve been chasing this dream longer than most of the readers of The 8th Continent have been alive. If even one of those readers enjoys the book, is moved by the book or surprised by it, or dare I say learned something from it, then it has all been worth it.

But I’m happy to report that there has been more than one. Late last month I had the great pleasure of meeting the sixth graders and Miami Country Day School, where I was treated as an honored guest. If there is any doubt that young people still love to read and are thrilled by good stories, well, then there’s this place in Florida you need to see.

The whirlwind has been spinning quickly. Launch parties, author events, new jobs for both me and my bestfriendspousecompanion; Some time last year I went to the bank and deposited money I earned writing stories about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, filling me with pride and a craving for a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

And now The 8th Continent Book 2 is out! I haven’t even had time to blog about Book 1! Welcome to the Jungle has been doing great. I boldly say it is better than Book 1. The second novel picks up four seconds after the first one ends, which is just enough time for you to close the back cover of one and open the front cover of the other.

This is a nice moment for me. I just completed a new batch of quests for Block Story (eight million downloads and counting) and I’m eagerly awaiting notes on The 8th Continent Book 3. It’s better than Book 2. (Are you detecting a pattern?)

I’m starting work on a new book this week. It’s gonna knock your socks off. I still dance and wave my hands in the air when I think about how I joined the roster at the aptly named New Leaf agency. Life is going well.

And there are lots more stories to tell.

The post The Last Six Months appeared first on Matt London.

A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of speaking to a group of librarians about the awesomeness that is The 8th Continent. I was asked to give a short speech about my inspirations for writing the book, and the effect libraries have had on me. I’m pretty happy with what I said, so I thought I would share my remarks with all of you. Check it out below the fold and let me know what you think.

Good afternoon! I want to thank you all for coming today. My name is Matt London. I’m a video game designer, writer, and educator, but most importantly I’m the author of The 8th Continent, a very exciting science fiction adventure novel that comes out September 16th. I’m very glad I have the opportunity to talk to you about The 8th Continent. It’s the story of Rick and Evie Lane, the children of a brilliant scientist and environmentalist who is persecuted by Winterpole, an international rule-making, permission-slip-granting, bureaucracy-championing organization. To protect their father, the kids come up with a wild idea to use their dad’s old trash transformation formula to turn the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into a verdant eighth continent, where they can be free from Winterpole’s meddling. But someone else has her eyes on the eighth continent—Vesuvia Piffle, the ten-year-old super-secret CEO of a real estate conglomerate, who is obsessed with all things plastic and pink. She wants to turn the garbage patch into a kind of Miami-on-steroids. Rick and Evie must race around the world, gathering the ingredients for the formula, dodging Winterpole agents and Vesuvia’s robot army every step of the way. It’s a very cool story that blends madcap action, science, and a strong environmental message to create the beginning of a truly epic series.

I have to be honest, it’s kind of surreal to be talking to you as an author, because librarians and educators like you did so much to shape me as a reader.

When I was ten my family moved across the country from northern Massachusetts to Texas. It was scary and lonely and all I wanted was to sit in my room and play Mario Kart. In fourth grade I was what you’d call a “reluctant reader.” It’s not that I never read books, it was just that I read them as little as possible, and the books I did read had Jedi knights on the cover.

That all changed my first week at Valley View Elementary. I’d made no friends—no one wanted to talk to the scrawny, gawky yankee with the huge head of hair … and even if they did, we had nothing to talk about. But that first week my teacher Ms. Hartman took the class to the school library, where the librarians showed us to the different sections and explained how to check out books. We were each supposed to choose a book to check out, but I didn’t know what books I liked. The librarian called over one of the kids she knew and said, “Hey Paul, why don’t you show Matt where your favorite books are?”

Paul took me to a shelf lined with thick glossy hardcover volumes, and pulled one out. The cover showed a mouse in a green robe, carrying a shield, and raising a long sword over his head. The book was Redwall by Brian Jacques. Paul insisted that I read each book in the series, and he had very particular instructions on the proper order to enjoy them. I devoured these books, witnessing an incredible boost to my reading speed. The vivid descriptions and fast-paced action sucked me in. I loved the colorful characters, and the way Jacques slipped riddles and puzzles into the text. Whenever I finished one of the Redwall books Paul and I would talk about it, reenacting our favorite parts. By the end of the school year, we were trading Goosebumps books like baseball cards, and racing each other to finish The Hobbit. My school librarian changed my life in two ways that day, the first week of fourth grade. She led me to the book that first showed me my love of reading, but she also helped me make my first friend in a new place.

When I wrote The 8th Continent, I had reluctant readers like me in mind. I wanted to tell a story that was full of action and heart and memorable characters. I wanted every page to have something cool and something hilarious. As a reluctant reader myself, I knew the temptation to put a book down, so I employed bite-size chapters and lots of cliffhangers to keep readers wondering what will happen next.  To keep them reading, and to give them a sense of accomplishment when they turn the page.

These are principles I’ve studied as a video game designer, principles I’ve tried to implement in my writing. In a world where every kid carries a video game system in her pocket and gets most of her video content in little snippets on Youtube, it’s important to provide books of high literary quality that recognize these changing trends and accommodate them, rather than reject them.

Another one of my goals with The 8th Continent was to put the science back in science fiction. Science was very important in my family. My father is a computer scientist and my brother is a neuroscientist, both PhDs. I just wanted to tell stories. But I was intrigued by the incredible stories tied to science — the narrative of invention and discovery, the wild personalities of scientists, and the noble goals they worked so hard to accomplish. Two of these science stories led me to write The 8th Continent.

The first was the story of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest of many such aquatic waste dumps, swirling in the Earth’s oceans. You see, ocean currents carry human-made litter into a kind of vortex, which gathers in the middle of these gyres, forming large areas of accumulated trash. The second is seasteads — artificial islands on the high seas — where creative scientists, entrepreneurs, and statesmen can create new societies.

Some of the science in The 8th Continent is outrageous and implausible, like supersonic flying sequoia trees, but much of it is inspired by real research that is being conducted today. My hope is someone will read The 8th Continent and be inspired to study computer programming, artificial intelligence, or terraforming in school. Every reader should recognize that pollution is still a serious problem in 2014, but we have the power to stop it.

The emphases on science and saving the planet are essential elements of The 8th Continent, but at its heart, the book is about its characters. Evie Lane, one of the heroes of the book, wants to create the eighth continent so she can get away from her school, where she has no friends. When writing the book, I drew upon my experiences as a kid who felt lonely and isolated. The 8th Continent is a story about figuring out who you are supposed to be. And I wrote it with the little Evies and the little Matts of the world in mind, dreamers and reluctant readers alike.

I want to thank you all so much for joining us today, and I look forward to sharing with you the world of The 8th Continent.

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It’s a pretty exciting time in the life of your friendly narrator. In six months The 8th Continent will be on the shelf. I’m hard at work crafting Rick and Evie’s next adventure. OneFourKidLit just did a COVER REVEAL! Lots of exciting stuff is going on.

If you’re reading this, then you have come to the right place for all your Matt London info needs. Stay tuned. There is a lot more on the way.

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