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We thank Politics and Prose, which assisted with the arrangements for this interview with Mr. Scott, author of the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. 

Q:Mr. Scott, with The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series you have revisited the genre of young adult fiction. Is there any reason why you decided to switch your focus after so many years of writing adult fiction?

A:I’ve always written for both adults and young adults, and I’m one of those writers who’ve been very careful not to be put in a box, because that happens so easily. My very first book was in 1982, which was an adult book, but my first children’s book was in 1983, and I’ve been writing more or less one or the other over the past twenty-odd years. So I really haven’t changed my market at all. My focus has been more on the young adult market. It is the most exciting market now, because it allows me to get in touch with the audience in a way that an adult market doesn’t.  

Q:What made you first decide to become an author? Did you have any favorite authors growing up? I heard you mention Mark Twain.

A:I’m a big Mark Twain fan. But, no, the one single fact that made me want to become a writer was because I was a reader. If you are a reader you will become a writer, without any shadow of a doubt, and that’s the one thing that forced me to become a writer. When I was growing up I was reading people like Mark Twain, and Huckleberry Finn is one of my favorite, favorite novels.  Reading people like Andre Norton, the great American fantasist; and Mary Norton who did The Borrowers; Susan Cooper, who did The Dark Is Rising series, they’re the ones who stick in my mind. 

Q:One thing I like about The Alchemyst is that it draws heavily from legends and mythology, as well as real historical figures. How much did you research in preparation for writing The Alchemyst? 

A:I started researching this series really properly in the year 2000, and writing it in 2006. I was writing other books in the meantime, but it’s probably six years of solid research. But, that’s built upon a lifetime of knowledge and research, history and mythology. And I’m still finding out stuff, and I still need stuff, particularly for the new book because the new book is set in South America, so I need to just make sure my knowledge of South American lore is really good.

Q:When you are writing, is there any specific place or time that you like to write, or is there any schedule that you like to keep?

A:If I’m at home and in my office, I like to write late into the night. It’s the best time, there’s no phone, no fax. When I’m traveling, it’s not so easy. So this morning, for example, I was leaving the hotel at nine o’ clock but I was up at six-thirty so I could write between seven and nine. When you’re traveling you try to squeeze writing in around the edges, but for me writing at night is absolutely the best. 

Q:How did you come up with the idea that magic is an extension of someone’s aura?

A:Well, that’s part of the conceit of this book. We, as human beings are surrounded by an electrical energy field, and that’s photographical and that’s very straight forward. And it is, new research suggests, that in times of illness the electrical field in your body can be photographed, and we can actually see all the damage in your system and all. And all I’ve done here is expanded that in, and make it part of my magical system for this book, and I’ve added the spells because it sounded good.  

Q:The singer-songwriter Libby Lavella has written several songs based off of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. How does it feel as an author to see your writing translated into song?

A:You know, that’s a really odd thing...[I] didn’t know Libby until she started writing, and I met Libby, she’s an Australian singer living in LA. She read the books [and] was inspired to write the songs; and it’s interesting, and very flattering to see how it spins off in a different direction, and it’s inspired her. The songs are very beautiful, and [they] are on my Web site. Libby’s given me permission so that you can download them. There is a plan in the future for Random House to release them as a sort of EP, once the entire series is finished. She’s just written a song for the newest book, The Sorceress, and she says that it’s the best yet.   

Q:When you aren’t working on a book, what do you like to do in your spare time?

A:I don’t have spare time. Really, I don’t. What’s happened, is, because I tour so much for this series, my writing time has really been sort of chipped away so I have to focus. What I do, I live in Ireland, I live by the beach, I cycle every day, I walk every day. For me, that would be my relaxation. For me, writing is what I do. And that would be true for most writers, writers write, and that’s what we do.  

Q:Is there any advice you would like to give to a new writer?

A:The advice I always give a new writer is, first of all, buy a really comfortable chair, because you’re going to spend a lot of time sitting in it. You have to read, you have to read, and you have to read in a really broad field. What I’m finding is a lot of people, if you read a lot of vampire novels, then you’re going to write a vampire novel. But it’s going to sound like all of the vampire novels that you’ve read, so you have to read really broadly. You have to read every single day, and you have to write every single day; even if you throw it away the following day, you have to write every day, that is the trick. Give yourself a set number of words, say, a page, two pages, four pages, doesn’t matter how much you give yourself as long as you stick to that limit. If you were to do four pages a day, which is a thousand words, you’d have The Sorceress finished in a hundred days, or three months.

Michael Scott was interviewed by Diana.