Interview with Gerald Kells
Published 2015-12-04.
Who are your favorite authors?
At the moment I've been reading Bohumil Hrabal's 'Closely Observed Trains' and I like a lot of surreal stuff like Franz Kafka and Kobo Abe but a lot of the times it's adventures. I love the Mortal Engines series by Phillip Reeve and Lemony Snickett is a big favourite.
What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
The fact that I have to. Sometimes it's just work stuff but I like to see movies in the morning. It was great to see Spectre at 10.00 with only ten of us.
When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
That's a lot of the time even though there's always a writing project on the backburner. Environmental stuff and walking in the hills if I can and seeing good bands.
How do you discover the ebooks you read?
I have a house full of ordinary books and I'm really old fashioned. I' m just beginning with all this technology. Maybe I'll answer in a year or two. I do like the Dewey system so I've got that in common with my Baudelaire heros.
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Not the very first but I remember one about someone crashing a car into a bush in front of a church which I wrote after skid marks appeared and a gap in the privet at the end of my road. I must have been a teenager but it's almost impossible to say now and it probably wasn't any good.
What is your writing process?
Disorganised. I always start with a big idea or an image. I get stuck a lot which is a pain in the neck.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
No, but I remember reading the Castle the first time and thinking I want to write like that, which isn't what I ended up doing although Kafka is always lurking in my subconscious I think.
How do you approach cover design?
I roughed up the cover design for the Net Mender's Son and I knew what I wanted but also that I wasn't good enough to do it. Thankfully, Hannah Dawes is a great artist and came up with some wonderful ideas so all I had to do was make minor suggestions about apostrophies and things
What are your five favorite books, and why?
Mortal Engines
Artemis Fowl
The Trial
The Woman in the Dunes
Gormenghast
Why? Read them and find out.
Should we believe anything you say?
At last the sort of question Lemony Snickett would ask and his characters would never answer and I won't either.
Or as Oscar Wilde might say: there's nothing less true than what we say about ourselves and nothing more true that the fictions we write.
What do you read for pleasure?
Lots. As much as I can. Michelle Paver's wolf boy series would be one example.
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Books by This Author
The Net Mender's Son
by Gerald Kells
A servant whose mistress was thrown into the sea.
A boy whose mother came from beyond the world.
A magician who wants to steal the blood of an innocent child.
When you fall from the Castle at the End of the World there is only one way down...
And no one ever comes back.
Enter a world which cannot exist and yet does and start an adventure which is doomed to fail but must succeed.
