Brian Corr interviews Eoin Colfer Eoin Colfer is one of the world’s top authors at the moment. He frequently in the last four or five years has occupied the New York Times number 1 best seller list having sold nearly ten million books. Mainly his series Artemis Fowl aimed at young adults, ten to sixteen year olds. The movies of that  series  are  in  the  making  and  should start

Eoin Colfer

coming out in the next year or two. The fourth book in the series, Artemis Fowl The Opal Deception has just been released here in Australia and Eoin Colfer is currently here promoting the book. I caught up with him during the week and I started by asking him how he had decided to be a writer.

Eoin: It wasn’t a conscious decision really, when you were living in our house my mum was a writer and my dad was a writer so we were given crayons and paper from day one and told to go and draw pictures or write stories. So we all did that and it was a very natural progression from there to writing down longer stories, ever longer stories until you came up with a book.

Brian: When did you start writing in a serious way?

Eoin: When I was about 20 it switched over from being a pastime to hopefully a career even though it wouldn’t bear fruit for a further fifteen years. My first effort at a book wasn’t a fully-fledged book I suppose. For the next fifteen years I wrote screenplays and plays and book drafts until finally when I was about 33, I managed to get a book published.

Brian: What did you live on, were you teaching during that time?

Eoin: My wife and I were Primary School teachers and we lived on that and we also taught overseas. It is a great place to go just to get some inspiration.

Brian: How long would it take to actually write a book?

Eoin: Generally it would take me around ten months to write a young adult novel as it’s called, so between editing and re-writes, it often takes from beginning to end, from starting to write the book until you have the book in your hand, about two and half years.

Brian: Are any of the characters, particularly the Artemis Fowl books based on real people?

Eoin: Oh yes, it would be very rare that I would take a complete person and transcribe them into a book, but what I often do is to take elements of my friends and family’s characteristics and amalgamate them into one person or one fairy or leprechaun or whatever you can spot bits of people in there. I pick and choose the people I use as well, that I know them and even if they recognised themselves they wouldn’t mind. My brother would mainly get the brunt of it and I tell them they are in it, they enjoy that and think it is a good laugh so hopefully we never fall out.

Brian: When I grew up I think the biggest sellers were Biggles by Captain WE Johns. That was in the days before television and Captain Biggles brought you around the world to a lot of exotic places. How do you think writing for that age group has changed say in the last forty years or so?

Eoin: I think some things have changed and some things stay the same. I think the main thing that has changed is that children expect to be put in touch with issues that affect them. Back in the days of Biggles, that didn’t really happen. Books were more or less based on idyllic places with idyllic people. You had the Famous Five on Treasure Island, or you had Biggles flying around the world. It wasn’t really stuff that related to kids. At the same time a good adventure story remains a good adventure story, so if you look back now, people are still reading Peter Pan and are still reading Robin Hood or Ivanhoe and those things remain wonderful stories. On the other side you have people like Melvin Burges who writes about issues that really do affect teenagers, like relationships or drugs. I think there is a real and important place for that. I also think that there is a place for my books, which are kind of adventure stories. I think it is important that books do deal with issues and that readers read those books as well as kind of escapist adventure stuff.

Brian: Artemis Fowl is a criminal mastermind, how does that fit with the age group?

a very narrow line to tread. If he goes too far then they won’t like him so you have to be really careful writing these books.

Brian: The Opal Deception, which was released in May of this year and now in Australia, is number four in the series of Artemis Fowl. You have sold over ten million copies of that series worldwide.

Eoin: It is flying out all over the world and I hope it lasts for a few more years. I think the Artemis Fowl books are my big blockbuster, once I finish those in about two books time I think life will settle down which I think would be nice in some ways because I will get more time to spend at home.

Brian: These books are aimed at ten to sixteen year olds and a lot of people buy books for children.

Eoin: Any bookseller will tell you that most people will ask them for books for their son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter. An awful lot of books are not bought by the kids themselves but by the parents or grandparents. If you ever don’t know what book to buy for your child or grandchild, ask the book seller, tell them the age and the child’s interests and you can be guaranteed you will be handed a great book for that child.

Brian: You have written four books in the Artemis series, Artemis Fowl, The Artic Incident, The Eternity Code and The Opal Deception, do people need to read them in sequence?

Eoin: You can pick up any of the books and read it on its own. Each book is a separate adventure. There are references back to the earlier books and characters but usually those references are explained. What I would hope is that you could pick them up in any order and just read one and if you like it then go and get the others. Ideally I suppose it would be better to start at the first book.

Brian: The book is released in Australia by Puffin with the recom-mended retail price of $19.95.

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