Temple

Early signs were: in Second Grade at school I set out to write the novelisation of the original Star Wars. It was going to be the longest story ever written by a seven-year-old. I got to page 2 and gave up. But the intention was there! And during the HSC, for a three-page 'creative writing' assignment I wrote a story which had a twist in the last line. I think that says something.

When did you begin writing your first novel, Contest?

I wrote Contest in my first year out of high school. I was 19 when I started it and 20 when I finished it. My motivation at the time was to write a book that was all action—action from start to finish—a book that thrust the reader back into his or her chair because of the sheer pace of the storytelling.

To be quite honest, I'd been finding that the books I was reading were too slow, or taking too long between action scenes. I also saw no reason why books couldn't have really massive action scenes, action scenes that were even bigger than those you see in blockbuster Hollywood movies.

Movies are constrained by budgets. But with books, the limit of your budget is the limit of your/magination. I like to think I have a big imagination.

What is Contest about?

Contest is the story of a man who is placed inside the New York State Library and told that he has been chosen to rep resent the human race in a contest that is held once every thousand years. He is told that six aliens have been placed inside the building with him and that all the entrances and exits to the building have been sealed. No-one is allowed out until only one contestant is left alive. Seven enter, only one leaves. In other words, it's a good old-fashioned fight- to-the-death. Lots of really scary aliens and clever escapes.

More so even than either Ice Station or Temple, I like to think of Contest as a roller-coaster ride on paper, a non-stop series of hold-your-breath, foot-to-the-floor thrills. The movie version will be great—kind of like Die Hard meets Aliens.

What led you to self-publish Contest?

Simple. I offered it to every major publisher in Sydney and they all rejected it! What drove me to go down the path of self-publishing was my desire to see it get picked up. I honestly thought it had the goods and, on top of that, I kind of thought that the publishers I'd offered it to hadn't given it a fair go (some, I am certain, didn't even read it).

So I figured that I had to get the attention of a major publisher some other way. I reasoned that publishers go to bookstores to see where their books are placed etc, so if I could get Contest onto the shelves of major bookstores, maybe someone in the publishing industry would see it.

And so, with the help of my brother, Stephen, I published Contest myself—complete with blockbuster-style cover art—and offered it to bookstores in person. It cost me $8,000 to print 1,000 books at a place called Image Desktop Publishing (a free plug for them but, hey, they did do a great job.

Oh, and folks, these are 1996 prices!

In any case, Contest was seen in a city bookstore by the Publisher of Mass-Market Fiction at Pan Macmillan, the kind folk publishing this tome. She called me up and asked if I was writing anything else. As it happened, only a few weeks before I had decided to commence work on a new book, a little action ditty set in Antarctica about a team of United States Marines sent to defend a spaceship found buried deep within the ice. I sent the first 50 pages to Pan Macmillan and they signed me up on the basis of those pages. That book was Ice Station.

At this point, I should add something about the stigma of publishing your own book. People look down on writers who self-publish their books. You should have seen some of the absolutely disdainful looks I got when I told people, 'Oh, it's self-published.' The look on their faces said, 'You must really suck. If your book was any good, a real publisher would have published it.'

Take the following true story: a guy I know (whom I didn't know back when I self-published Contest) told me recently that he went into a major Sydney bookstore (I won't name it) in late 1996 and picked Contest up. He showed it to the sales assistant and said, 'What's this book like?' The assistant said, 'It's self-published, what do you think?'

Ouch.

Such comments fail to appreciate just how difficult it is for an author (especially someone who doesn't know anybody who works in the publishing industry) to get picked up by a major publisher. Hell, I sent Contest to one of the biggest agencies in Sydney to try to get in the loop. They lost the manuscript. That's how hard it is if you're an unknown.

Ultimately, though, that self-published book got me a major publishing deal. 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained,' I say.

So go easy on self-published authors, because as far as I am concerned, at least they have the courage to back them selves and see their books put into print.

I understand that you've sold the film rights to Contest. Is that right?