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Eoin Colfer (pronounced Owen) is the international bestselling author of the wildly popular Artemis Fowl series, which won the British Children’s Book of the Year Award and has sold over 18 million copies. He’s also the author of Half Moon Investigations, which was the basis for a TV series in 2009, plus The Supernaturalist and Airman. Owen’s latest book is the highly anticipated sixth installment to the late Douglas Adams' popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and is called And Another Thing. Eoin lives in Ireland.
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This episode originally aired on 10/15/2009 with the following authors:
Note: The following interview has been transcribed from The Author Hour radio show. Please excuse any typos, spelling and gramatical errors.
Interview with Eoin Colfer | | |
Bonus Question(s) that Didn't Air on the Live Radio Show
Matthew Peterson:
Well, let me ask you a bonus question. And Another Thing is your first book for adults.
Eoin Colfer:
Yeah.
Matthew Peterson:
What was it like writing a book for adults compared to writing for a younger audience?
Eoin Colfer:
I thought I would find it more difficult than writing for young adults. But I actually didn’t. In a way it was like the speed limiter was taken off the car and I could just go as fast as I wanted and I could say what I wanted and I could use any theme I wanted to do. Now, having said that, the themes are not very risque and I don’t use bad language really, so, but I just felt that I could if I wanted to and it really freed me up. So, I think writing this book has been the most fun I’ve had of all of my books and I think actually the writing of it is going to be the best part of the experience. So, you know, it was great fun. You did have to think a little bit harder and I had to fight myself not to foreshadow stuff. When you’re writing a kids book you have to leave big hints along the way maybe sometimes. With this book you just let little tiny hints, you know people will pick up on them. Because I think the people who read hitchhiker books are by and large a highly intelligent bunch, so they won’t have any problem picking up on little tid bits I drop here and there and references back to the original five books.
Extra Material That was Cut from the Radio Show Because of Time Constraints
Eoin Colfer: So, I gave up for a while then, and I went over seas and I wrote a few plays and I dabbled here and there, but eventually I came to rest in a town in North Africa. I was still teaching and my wife and I became involved with this orphanage and I helped out street kids. Really then I couldn’t help but write that story down and I did and I actually got a publisher, and pretty quickly. But I think what had happened was I had spent 10 years in between the 2 books, finding a style, that was a good style and learning to write something that was real and true, so when I finally did get a book out, it was something that I could be really genuinely proud of and not something I’d kind of cobbled together from various other books. My first book was largely Tarzan, set in Ireland. If I’m honest, and I was kind of “what would really sell?" and I thought well, something like Tarzan, and I put a few Vikings in there as well. But with the second book which was called Benny and Omar, I never thought like that. It was, this is the story, and if people want to read it great, and if they don’t well, you know . . . and I did my best.
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Matthew Peterson: Well, your main character, Artemis Fowl, is a genius, so you would expect him to be thinking a little bit more maturely than a normal young teenage kid.
Eoin Colfer: Trouble is, I’m not a genius. [Both laugh]
It takes me months to think up the things that a genius thinks that Artemis does off the cuff. So, but that’s a very important point, that he is a genius, so at least one genius-like thing must happen per book to justify that monitor, so . . .
Matthew Peterson: Yep.
Eoin Colfer: I spend a lot of time thinking about, “What would be a nice genius thing to happen here?"
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew Peterson: And you’re writing the last one [Artemis Fowl book]. Is it the last one of the series that you’re writing or that will come up next?
Eoin Colfer: I don’t know, Matthew. I don’t know if it’s going to be the last one. It will be the last one for a while because I think I want to do some other things. But I would never say never because the end of this story that I’m working on at the moment does not really tie up all the loose ends. So, I would think I will write this one and maybe do two or three other books and maybe come back, but I don’t really plan that far ahead. I know some writers have the last . . . they know exactly how many books are going to be in it and they know what’s going to happen at the end, but my books are . . . each book is a separate adventure, so it’s not one story arch that continues on until the big battle at the end where good versus evil and one is killed. Mine are more like little James Bond books – each one is a separate adventure.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah, that’s true. I like that you said James Bond because it does have a big James Bond feel to it.
Eoin Colfer: It does. I was very influenced by Bond especially the Connery Bonds, the first movie I ever saw on the big screen was Thunderball and imagine if you’re a kid in the country in Ireland and this is the first movie you see, it’s kind of the epitome of sophistication and class and wit. I mean, I was hugely influenced by that, and I think, even so much that I have a few of the characters myself in the books: a centaur who gives out all the various gadgets . . .
Matthew Peterson: That’s true, that’s true.
Eoin Colfer: But he’s become more than that, I think, but in the initial book he was certainly just a cipher for Q in a way, but that’s the kind of influence they had on me.
Matthew Peterson: And speaking of movies . . . how is the Artemis Fowl movie coming along?
Eoin Colfer: It’s slow. It’s in kind of in production hell, I think is the phrase over there, but Airman, which is another one. That’s coming along really quickly, in fact, they’ve overtaken it. That’s in production now. They’re making out of stop motion 3-D and it’s in the script writing stage now, so I think that’s going to be great. From what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, that’s going to be fantastic. The Artemis movie, I don’t know, I think it’s kind of, it’s stuck in the doldrums, but I’m always hopeful that I’ll get a phone call, and say, well it’s gone ahead now and they’ve sorted out the problems and it’s in production.
Matthew Peterson: And there’s graphic novels, and so there’s lots of stuff for us to wait for as the graphic novels come out. If we’re not getting a new book coming out, at least we’ll have graphic novels.
Eoin Colfer: Well, the graphic novel . . . the 2nd graphic novel is just out and then the new book should be out next summer. I’m trying to not keep the wait too long.
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