Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [143]
Honestly, in Egypt I became one of those tourists who is the first off the bus and the last one back to it, and who pesters the tour guide with all kinds of weird questions. For example, at the Valley of the Kings, I asked, ‘Is there a hieroglyph that says “Death to grave robbers?”’ (Sure enough, there is, and the image of it in this book is it!). And neither of us will ever forget exploring—on our own—the haunting chambers beneath the ‘Red’ Pyramid south of Giza by the light of a perilously fading flashlight!
Once again, thanks to everyone at Pan Macmillan for another stellar effort. I’ve been so fortunate to work with a group of people who can package my work so well (I really love the jacket of this book).
Kudos also to my agents at the William Morris Agency, Suzanne Gluck and Eugenie Furniss—they look after me so well! And they’re just from the literary section. That’s not even mentioning the cool people in LA (notably Alicia Gordon and Danny Greenberg) doing film things on my behalf.
I’d also like to thank Mr David Epper, who generously supported my favourite charity, the Bullant Charity Challenge, by ‘buying’ the name of a character in this book at Bullant’s annual auction dinner. Thus, his son, Max Epper, is in the book as Professor Max Epper, aka Wizard. Thanks, Dave.
And lastly, to family and friends, once again I pledge my eternal thanks for their support and tolerance. My mum and dad; my brother, Stephen; friends like Bec Wilson, Nik and Simon Kozlina; and, of course, my first ‘official’ reader, my good friend John Schrooten, who still reads my stuff in the stands at the cricket after all these years. If he starts ignoring the cricket because he’s absorbed in the book, then it’s a good sign!
Believe me, it’s all about encouragement. As I’ve said in my previous books: to anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.
M.R.
Sydney, Australia
October 2005
AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY
THE WRITING OF SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS
How was the writing of Seven Ancient Wonders different from the writing of your other books?
It’s funny, but for some reason the writing of this book was a more solitary experience than the others—if anything, it felt a lot like the writing of Contest. Perhaps that’s because the subject matter of the book, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is so ancient, so distant, so alien to us, that I was creating most of the story from pure imagination (rather than from actual sources—some of the stuff on the Wonders is pretty flimsy). As I did when I created the aliens in Contest, I just had to create these mystical places, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for example, from scratch.
What did you try to do differently with this book?
For me, the key difference between Seven Ancient Wonders and my previous books is the theme of ‘family’ in it. The team of international soldiers guarding Lily ultimately becomes a family—complete with grandparents (Doris and Max Epper), squabbling brothers and sisters (Pooh Bear, Stretch, Big Ears, Zoe), and the father-like figure of Jack West.
This was a thematic thing that I started in Hover Car Racer and I enjoyed it immensely when I wrote that novel. In the end, when you write an action-thriller novel, you must have characters that you care about, and by creating this quasi-family environment out of a bunch of hard-ass troopers, I felt I’d created a special kind of team that readers would want to cheer for.
I particularly love how Lily renames all the soldiers, changing all their tough-guy callsigns into goofy childish nicknames. Having utilised ‘serious’ call-signs in the Scarecrow books, I felt it was time to have a bit of fun, and turn this plot device on its head.
Is it true that for this book you created your own language?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I created a language! What I did do was create an alphabet (not unlike cuneiform) to display the Word of Thoth—but my translation is just from English, not a brand-new language. That would have been way too hard and time-consuming. I’ll leave