Becca interviews Alex Scarrow
By Becca / Spinebreakers Crew
What inspired you to start writing?
To be honest I was at it by the age of 9. I have a crystal clear memory of a friday afternoon at primary school - the class being presented with a photograph cut out from the National Geographic of an Eskimo leading a bear (on a leash!) across arctic tundra. It inspired me to write my first 'novel'...just like the (rubbish) movie 'Day After Tomorrrow', it featured a world frozen by the sudden arrival of an ice-age and it was the story of survival of a boy and a bear he's rescued from a zoo. I scribbled away over the weekend and turned up on Monday with 2 exercise books completely filled!
Do you think that your book is original in terms of adventure?
I think, to be honest, there are many ingredients in there that geeks like me will recognise from other books, films, games...even classic comics like 2000AD. And to be fair, most books/films/games these days 'borrow' ideas. Which, by the way, is perfectly fine, after all that's exactly what the creative process is...the recombination of concepts. But what's important is that you produce something new from the ingredients you've borrowed, otherwise you're just rehashing what's already out there.
How did you come up with your characters Liam, Sal and Maddy?
I have a number of nieces and nephews in the family, and of course my son, Jake. Between you and me, there are elements of them in the characters. I won't name names...or traits, that'll land me in hot water, for sure. But I suppose there's also a bit of me in Liam....no hang on, actually, thinking about it. I'm more like the character, Bob. A bit of a bubble-headed clutz.
The introduction of your characters feel slightly rushed, was that your intention?
Yes. There's a pace to TimeRiders I wanted to begin with a sense of hustling against time...things being a bit of a panic; that sense that the 'agency' that recruits them is also struggling to find its own feet and is busking it as it goes along. I can't say anymore about the agency there as I'll end up in spoiler territory, but it's all meant to feel a bit ad hoc. And of course the three of them are thrown into the action before they're ready. Later in the book, as each deal with the crisis in their own way, we get a chance to grab a breath from the action and get to know them better.
How did you come up with the idea of having Kramer taking over as Fuher in Germany?
A favourite hobby of historians is to discuss 'what if' history. If-something-had-gone-differently-here-then-the-world-have-gone-this-way kind of thing. And one of the most common 'what if' discussions is how and where the Nazis went wrong and whether there's a possibility that they actually could have won the war. For creative writing purposes, that's an exciting and terrifying angle to explore. Dr Paul Kramer is the embodiment of that question played out to its logical conclusion. But he's also an interesting character in his own right. Yes...he becomes a brutal dictator and destroys the world but, his intentions at the beginning are in fact honourable - to save us from a dark future. It's the classic example of power corrupting.
The ending of your book is emotive, is the prolonged build up meant to add to this?
I hate...really hate...books that end on a happy-clappy 'that's the bad guys all sorted, let's go have a cup of tea' note. For that matter, I really hate protagonists who are super-clever, and can leap out of harm's way with one deft movement. I like real characters who mess up, who wrestle with their own fear, who can be spiteful, be insecure. Because it feels more real-world. And book endings are the same for me; life seldom ends up with a happy ending - ginger beer and cakes all round. For me a book that ends on a note of tragedy, melancholy or pathos is a book I'll be thinking about long after I've closed the cover. Behind the action and adventure of TimeRiders is a tragic story...which I don't want to talk about too much now as it ties in with the series-long story arc. Needless to say, Liam is....no, see? I nearly let slip a spoiler there. (Shhhh Alex, say no more.)
What ideas do you have for the upcoming sequel, or is there going to be one?
Oh good grief, yes! I've just finished writing the second book, which will be out in the Summer and I'm busy working on the synopsis for the third book. Book 2 sees the characters go back to the Late Cretaceous period, to a time a few thousand years before the K2 event. The series has a meta-narrative planned out over 9 books.
What type of audience do you want to attract by writing this book?
From the beginning I wanted TimeRiders to be a book that transcends book store age bands. It's something I want a son and dad, a mum and daughter, (also...a son and a mother, and father and a daughter - is that all combinations accounted for? Yup) to both be able to read and enjoy and then compare notes on. It's what I do with Jake. We read the same books and then chew the cud on them. Of course we like different elements of the same books, and we'll argue 'til we're blue in the face about which bits are coolest...but I love that.