I’ve always wanted to write for both adults and children; I wrote the first Alcatraz book before my second adult book was published. When I was writing the Alcatraz books, I was trying to target the book at the person I was when I was that age. It’s less that Alcatraz is me and more that Alcatraz is written to represent someone that the thirteen-year-old me would be interested in reading about.
The most fun I had with it was that in children’s books you seem to be able to shift between modes much more easily. In an adult book, people really focus a lot on what genre the book is. Is it a humorous book? Is it a science fiction book? Is it this, is it that? With a children’s book it seems like people are much more willing to accept jumping from humor to drama and including all sorts of different elements together in one book without forcing it to sit in one little box.
I don’t know that with the Alcatraz books I have any specific influences except perhaps for Lemony Snicket and the Artemis Fowl books; those are both things that were spinning around in my head at the time.
Q: Was writing Alcatraz some sort of recreation for you, compared to your epic fantasy works?
A: Yes, it is. I actually wrote Alcatraz between Mistborn books two and three. I had just finished book two, and I wanted to push in and do book three, but I was feeling a little exhausted, almost a little burnt out. So not telling anybody what I was doing, I took some time off to do something very different to encourage myself to grow as an artist by exploring different types of writing. Normally I’m an architect. I build an outline before I start to write. This time I wanted to do a more gardener-type book. I started with a few premises that I found amusing and interesting and built a book out of them as I went. It turned out very well – I don’t try to publish most of my experimental projects because they don’t turn out very well.
So for every Alcatraz, there’s two or three other novels that just kind of nose-dived. That doesn’t happen with my epic fantasies because I spend so long planning them and getting them ready that I know how they’re going to turn out before I start.
But anyway, Alcatraz was a light-hearted, fun – but hopefully still interesting and intriguing – story for me to write, about a young man who discovers that librarians secretly rule the world!
Q: Your adult books are epic, even tragic, but your children’s books put humor forward. Why is that?
A: I think it’s important to explore the full range of emotions. My adult books also have humor, and my children’s books also have tragedy and betrayal. But for a young reader it’s important to love what you’re reading, and a higher percentage of humor helps foster that.