{"id":97,"date":"2012-01-27T15:14:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T05:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/?page_id=97"},"modified":"2012-06-21T20:51:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T10:51:23","slug":"eoin-colfer-interview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/interviews\/eoin-colfer-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Eoin Colfer Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>This interview first appeared in Magpies: Talking about Books for Children <\/a>in 2003<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Eoin Colfer<\/p><\/div>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Artemis Fowl <\/em>has brought international success for author Eoin (pronounced Owen) Colfer<\/a>. But before Artemis there was Meg, dead heroine of The Wish List<\/em>, and before Meg there was Benny, rascally hero of Benny and Omar <\/em>and Benny and Babe<\/em>. A great fan of these earlier novels, I was scheduled to interview Eoin when I was in Ireland last year, but by then Artemis<\/em> fever had taken hold and Eoin was on tour in Australia \u2014 so a year and several continents later, with Eoin back in Australia for the release of Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident<\/em>, I finally had the chance to sit down with him for a chat.<\/p>\n

I read your piece in Inis<\/em>, the Children\u2019s Books Ireland<\/a> journal (Summer 2002), and I was interested to read \u2014 you had your eye on the prize didn\u2019t you, you wanted the success that came with Artemis Fowl<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, if I wanted to be a writer I had to make money. I\u2019d written six books and they did really well in Ireland but it\u2019s a small population and it was either make a few bob or stop writing. A lot of writers in Ireland don\u2019t do anything else but we had our house on mortgage, and so I couldn\u2019t just stop working. That\u2019s why I decided to get an agent.<\/p>\n

Did that conscious decision to be successful so you could keep it going, did that influence the writing of Artemis Fowl<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I didn\u2019t even decide to get an agent until I was finished Artemis<\/em>. My wife Jackie said, this can\u2019t go on, you\u2019re spending five hours a night writing and I come home from work and then I have to mind Finn as well, and I make the dinner because you\u2019re writing\u2026 you have to get an agent! And so I did.<\/p>\n

Artemis<\/em><\/strong> is a bit of a change of pace from your earlier books.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a change from the Benny<\/em> books, but I think if you look at The Wish List <\/em>you can see where it\u2019s going. That\u2019s like the link if you like. It has a bit of the magic in it and so The Wish List <\/em>was the first step towards the Artemis<\/em> books.<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the Irishness of the Benny<\/em> books, the language, the hurling\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember someone saying to me in the publishing world, you know, you\u2019re just trying to minority yourself out of an audience. You have an Irish boy playing hurling in Tunisia with an African boy. I mean, who\u2019s going to want to read that? But I think it\u2019s the story and the characters that are important. It will be interesting to see, because Benny<\/em> will be coming out here over the next couple of years, so it will be interesting to see how that does go down.<\/p>\n

Benny is a wonderful character \u2014 there\u2019s a line from Benny through Meg to Artemis\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a darkness in the books even though they\u2019re very funny, and the action\u2019s fantastic, but Benny\u2019s a\u2026 I wouldn\u2019t want him in my class, I wouldn\u2019t want him in my house! He\u2019s a tricky kid\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s a tricky kid but he\u2019s a real kid.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s a really attractive kid too, you like him and you\u2019re on his side from the start, but that scene when he starts school in Tunisia and he deliberately sets out to sabotage himself, to make himself the hard man\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

But that is so typical of Irish children \u2014 not just Irish kids, I think most twelve year old boys when they move to a different environment. I was watching that happen as I was teaching in Tunisia. Irish boys have a hard time accepting sincerity. If someone says to them you are very good they think there\u2019s something behind it; I know he\u2019s telling me I\u2019m lovely, but what does he mean by that? And Benny had a bad case of that. And like many twelve year olds he has a bad case of the world has to fit into his order. But what I like about Benny is in one way he does learn and in another way he never learns. He\u2019s a real kid. I had no interest in writing about a fella that\u2019s kind of saintly and lovely. I wanted what 90% of 12 year olds are really like, and that is they\u2019re a bit mischievous, scamps, and you know, get away with what they can get away with. I think that\u2019s what a lot of boys like about Benny \u2014 he is a bit of a lad and he does get in trouble, but at the end of the day when he has to make the important decision he does, he makes the right one. There\u2019s a line in The Wish List<\/em>; “There\u2019s a line between bold and bad” and he\u2019s not going to cross that line.<\/p>\n

Meg has.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meg has crossed it, kind of \u2014 yeah \u2014 eternally.<\/p>\n

Yes indeed. That\u2019s shocking, to kill your main character off in the first chapter, that was very audacious. Not many people would do that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have no interest in writing the same book someone else has written. I mean, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m that different either. If you take Huckleberry Finn<\/em> for example \u2014 we read that now and think, great book, but that was completely revolutionary for the time where this boy was smoking and drinking and swearing and his best friend was a black guy. That was unbelievable and Twain was banned and booed.<\/p>\n

Still is in some states of America.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly, they still not appreciate it in some places. So compared to that kind of thing my little trouble makers are very, very small players indeed. But at the same time I\u2019m not interested in bland. You may like my books, you may not like them, but I don\u2019t think people would say I\u2019m bland.<\/p>\n

Has The Wish List <\/em>attracted many complaints? It opens with a violent criminal act, you\u2019ve got a dead main character, and then an uneasy alliance between Heaven and Hell to see where Meg will end up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t, no, but I think it could. I think there\u2019s definitely potential there for people to be offended. There\u2019s always people waiting to be offended. And I think if you put the devil in a book there are people who are going to be offended. Once I\u2019m satisfied myself that it is not immoral or harmful or graphic \u2014 I mean, I think the scenes with the devil are very funny. They\u2019re very light-hearted. I can see where if you wanted you could say well, it\u2019s disgraceful, there\u2019s an alliance between Beelzebub and St Peter, but people were offended by Elvis, so what can I tell you?<\/p>\n

So you haven\u2019t had any complaints?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not many, I\u2019ve had more over Artemis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Is that the violence?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, it was the fact that he was a bad guy. And I\u2019m trying to say, well have you read the whole book? Oh no, we\u2019ve just read the first six pages and that\u2019s enough. And I\u2019m saying, well if you read the whole book you\u2019d see that he has to make some very difficult moral choices and he makes the right ones and he\u2019s changing. He\u2019s evolving through contact with other people and that was his big problem, he never had friends, the only person he had was Butler, and now his family are coming back to him and he\u2019s making kind of alliances with the fairy people and he\u2019s learning. I think the most important thing is he\u2019s seeing the effect of what he does has on other people. Before that it was all in his mind; well, I\u2019ll kidnap this person and that\u2019ll be easy, but then he actually feels their pain.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a film deal. How far along is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty far along. At the moment, the director has been picked, a guy called Larry Guterman is being contracted and he\u2019s working on the storyboards. They\u2019re in Ireland at the moment scouting locations and there\u2019s talent scouts in the schools looking for Artemis and they\u2019re supposed to start filming in September (2002) and that\u2019s all they\u2019ll tell me.<\/p>\n

So is it complete live action?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019ll be like Lord of the Rings. It won\u2019t be on that scale \u2014 I wish \u2014 but it\u2019ll be some live action with computer graphics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sort of begging, really, to be filmed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what people say. I don\u2019t think you can sit down and say I\u2019m going to write the book for a screenplay, it\u2019s just the way I happen to think. Maybe it\u2019s as a child of the media. Our generation would have been the first to grow up with cinema and TV in the house, so maybe it\u2019s that. I actually tend to think in comic book form, because I always was a big comic fan, so maybe that sort of wham bam thing transfers easily to celluloid.<\/p>\n

Artemis Fowl <\/em><\/strong>has been huge, of course, it\u2019s had a massive marketing campaign behind it. Your other books have found their audience more quietly\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really like that way of building an audience because that\u2019s the way I always did it before, the book comes out very quietly, there\u2019s no press and it builds. That\u2019s why (the marketing behind Artemis Fowl <\/em>was) so worrying, but obviously it worked out well. But when it came out first I was, you know, not terrified, but I was very worried, because when something comes out with that amount of hype you\u2019re just waiting for it to be chopped down. But I was lucky.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a third Artemis<\/em> book, I suppose it\u2019ll be out early next year, so I\u2019m looking forward to that, although I haven\u2019t finished it yet. I\u2019d like to do another Benny<\/em> book in the future. I have an idea for one. I\u2019m glad the Benny<\/em>s are kind of hanging in there, because I\u2019m really proud of those books, you know. I\u2019d like to do science fiction, I\u2019d like to do thrillers and mysteries and so on. Some of the great writers, the prolific writers do a book every year for forty years, so if I don\u2019t smoke and I can stay out of car wrecks I should have time to do another ten or twelve books at least.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This interview first appeared in Magpies: Talking about Books for Children in 2003 Artemis Fowl has brought international success for author Eoin (pronounced Owen) Colfer. But before Artemis there was Meg, dead heroine of The Wish List, and before Meg … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":7,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"sidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-97","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97\/revisions\/1228"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}