Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of blog updates lately! I’ve had my head down, trying to finish up the first draft of Doomsday (almost 65,000 words down and getting VERY close to the end now!)

Thanks so much to all of you who have already picked up a copy of Fallout! It seems like most of you are enjoying it (apart from the usual ferocious anger at me for ending the book on a cliffhanger… but honestly, what else did you expect from me?) so that’s great too! Reviews of the new book are starting to appear online, e.g. here and here.

In other news, my cousin David is responsible for probably the greatest/worst interview (and accompanying photo) I’ve ever been a part of. Click here to check it out.

Also, a quick reminder that I’ll be appearing at the Sydney Writers’ Festival THIS SUNDAY, alongside Emily Rodda, Sue Whiting and Hilary Rogers. The session is a free, unticketed, rock-up-on-the-day event – details here.

Okay, back to work on the book!

Remember: you are so much more than your test scores.

From the Vice Reverses remix EP. Check it out!

The Phoenix Files: Fallout is out now in Australia and New Zealand!

You can pick up a copy for iPad or Kindle, or at your local bookstore.

(Incidentally, if you’re new to the series, I would definitely recommend starting with the first book, Arrival, which you can get here, here, here and here.)

Back in the olden days when I was a primary school kid, I developed a pretty severe obsession with Animorphs, this series of books about kids turning into animals to fight aliens.

The series was written by K.A. Applegate. At least, that’s what the book covers said (but as we know, book covers can be tricky). I later learned that Animorphs was co-authored by K.A. Applegate’s husband and writing partner, Michael Grant, better known these days as the author of the GONE series.

Michael specialises in dark, creepy sci-fi/horror, and two more of his books have just hit Australian and New Zealand shores: FEAR, the fifth of six GONE books, and BZRK the first of a new trilogy for older readers.

I recently had the chance to ask Michael a few questions about these new projects…

You’ve promised your readers that BZRK will be unlike anything they’ve ever read. That’s a bold claim, but the scenes down in the nano certainly live up to it! How much research did you need to do to get all the details right?

Research? Research, is it? Um. . . Well, mostly I looked at pictures on-line. Shocking, disgusting pictures. No, not those kind of pictures, I mean SEM or Scanning Electron Microscope images of body parts and beasties and fungi and amoeba and so on. Do not look at SEMs of scabies. Trust me. It was all quite disturbing, actually.

The week I read BZRK also happened to be the week I split my chin on the footpath and had to go under the needle and stitching apparatus of an unfamiliar doctor. This was not a good combo. How much of the financial burden are you willing to take for my inevitable therapy bills? And do you worry that I’m not going to be the only one asking?

Like you weren’t already nuts. Did you at least get a ruggedly handsome scar? Did you get Kirk Douglas chin, or what my daughter calls “butt chin?”

FEAR is definitely aptly titled! It’s possibly your most nightmare-inducing work to date. What is it that attracts you to this kind of writing?

I don’t know. I think of myself as perfectly normal. Just the other day at Black Mass as we were summoning Satan with goat’s blood and the tears of a virgin (one of those is soooo much easier to find than the other) I was saying to the the High Priestess that I didn’t understand why people suspect me of being as strange and disturbing as my books. She thinks people are just projecting.

I’ve heard you quoted as saying, “I am not a role model. I’m just a writer.” Can you expand on that a bit? What responsibility, if any, do you think a writer has to his or her readers?

My responsibility is to entertain. My goal is to write books that make it impossible for a reader to stop reading. I want them hooked. I want them driven. I want them to read under the covers and when their mothers ask them if they’re asleep I want my readers to lie and say, “Yes!” Then I want them to stay up all night reading, go to school exhausted the next day so that they fail their exams, drop out of school and end up living on the streets.

To expand just a bit: I’m not mom or dad. I’m only dad to my kids. (And, just to be clear, I’m not mom to anyone.) I think it’s a bad idea for kids to go looking for role models in people they don’t actually know — athletes, actors or heaven help us, writers. In fact I’m not really a fan of the whole role model idea. Find the things you believe in and love: justice, beauty, humor, truth, whatever, and live your life in such a way as to demonstrate that love. Don’t be like someone else, especially someone you only know because of some public image they project. Instead be a person who cares deeply about something important and make that your role. My own personal thing is truth. Capital T truth. Which is why I’m trying to answer this question honestly.

FEAR ends on a huge, game-changing cliffhanger. How far along are you with LIGHT? Do you know how it all ends yet, or is that still to be discovered?

I haven’t started LIGHT yet. I have no idea how it ends. I won’t know until I get there. Just like life, brother, you never know until you know. But I promise this: it’s not a dream, it’s not a fantasy, it was all real, it will all be explained, and the kids buried in Perdido Beach’s town plaza will stay there.

This post is part of Michael Grant’s Show No FEAR and Go BZRK! blog tour, in celebration of the release of FEAR and BZRK in Australia and NZ.

Click here to check out the rest of the stops on the tour!

A few things about the new book:

1. I hope you love it! I realise some of you have been waiting a long time for this book to come out, and I’m so excited to finally be able to share it with you! Can’t wait to hear what you think!

2. Please don’t spoil it for anyone else! Fallout gives up more answers about Phoenix than any other book so far. It will prove some of your theories right and others very, very wrong! I realise that some of you – you know who you are – will want to pelt me with questions and reactions as soon as you’ve finished the book. Like I said, I’d love to hear from you, but please don’t post in anything in the comments that might ruin the book for others. For spoilery stuff, please use email instead!

3. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thanks for sticking with this series for five books now. Thanks for your questions and comments and theories and hate-mail about the cliffhanger endings. It’s such a privilege to have you guys as readers. I hope this next instalment has been worth the wait!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an end-of-the-series to write…

In the meantime, here’s another 0.3%:

In response to questions/comments from yesterday: Yes, Fallout really does open with only fourteen days until the end. Three weeks have passed between the close of the previous book and the beginning of this one. A few notable events have happened in that time (For instance, the mention of “thirteen” people living in the Vattel Complex doesn’t quite tally with the number who were down there at the end of Underground…) but don’t worry, the book will catch you up on everything you need to know!

Here’s the first 0.3% of it:

I backed this album on Kickstarter. So glad I did. It’s great stuff.

(Speaking of the new book, The Phoenix Files: Fallout is due out in May, but because of the way these things are distributed and released, the book may actually be in stores anytime from NEXT WEDNESDAY 25th! Can’t wait for you guys to read it!)