Jack interviews William Kostakis!

Remember when hotshot young author William Kostakis interviewed Jack? Well, this is like that, on opposite day.

Jack: What's the best thing you've ever missed out on because you couldn't stop writing? Sleep? A sibling's wedding? Boston Legal?
Will: I've missed a few birthday parties, I know that. The angry, drunken "THAT'S IT . . . WE'RE OVER! O-V-A-H!" text messages/phone calls are never fun, but I always make sure their pressie is twice as good to make up for it. Oh, and sleep. Half of Loathing Lola was written in a sleep-deprived haze. Granted, most of the stuff I wrote at 3am was cut at 10am the next morning when I realised that making up words like "gjdhfdscdas" wasn't so much me being inventive and postmodern so much as it was me falling asleep on top of the keyboard. I've yet to find the balance between having a life and writing, but I'm still young. I've got heaps of time to find it.

Jack: Indeed. Are any of the characters based on or inspired by people you know? And if so, did you reveal anything embarrassing about them?
Will: I'm sure some characters inherited something from people I know, but on the whole, I tried to keep my real-life friends and family separate from Courtney's friends and family. Well, except the grandmother character. I don't think I even attempted to disguise that inspiration. Yiayia Susie is mannerism-for-mannerism, word-for-word, an identical replica of my grandmother, Yiayia Susie (see what I said before about not even attempting to disguise it?). And she loves it. She's got her copy of the book, and every time someone comes over, she flicks it open to one of the ear-marked pages Yiayia Susie's featured on and forces people to read to her, one, because she's insanely proud, and two, because she can't read. As for revealing anything embarrassing about her, I wouldn't dare . . . she's a deceptively strong woman. But yeah, I'm considering just sending her around to do all my publicity. She's a riot and plus, get her started on the "My grandson . . . " tangent and she won't stop.

Jack: Been there. Which do you spend more time daydreaming about - the plot of your next book, or the glory when it's published?
Will: There's something so exciting about plotting another book. I guess that's the most important thing to daydream about, without the good plot, there's no glory. But, I'm guilty of thinking about the glory WAY more than the next plot. My bad.

Jack: It's cool, I do that too. If someone totally ripped off your idea and wrote a book just like Loathing Lola, would you be flattered, or would you come down on them with the fury of a thousand suns?
Will: I'd send Yiayia Susie after them.

Jack: (laughs) Now that you're a huge success, are you going to drop out of uni? Or does education have some value other than procrastinating while you wait for your real life to start?
Will: Huge success? *William feels his head inflate so much that his nose is now in proportion with it.*
Honestly, I love uni. Not the workload so much as everything else. All my friends are there, the bar is cheap, latenight assignmenting can actually be fun on account of said cheap bar.

Jack: Ever get good marks on those late-night cheap-bar assignments?
Will: Actually yeah, not bad.

Jack: If you ever had to write an autobiography, what bits would you exaggerate? And what bits would you leave out entirely?
Will: See, I'd never trust myself with my own autobiography. I have this idea where, if a publishing house is really desperate for a biography, I'll round up ten friends and ten people who can't stand the sight of me, and have them each write a chapter about me. That stops me from being a revisionist about the whole thing and smoothing over the bumps in the road, and I think it's the only way it can be a truly honest representation of my life.

Jack: Do you ever live vicariously through your characters? Make them say things you wish you'd said, and so forth?
Will: I have this horrible habit of shooting straight from the lip, so sometimes, characters are just repeating some of the inappropriate things I've said. Or at least, that's what they used to do, but the more I wrote Loathing Lola, the characters developed further . . . into people who weren't me, and they developed different mannerisms and speech patterns, and they weren't just mouthpieces for me to say whatever I wanted through them. I like to think that they say whatever they want through me.

Jack: Okay. Harry Potter - so good, or no good?
Will: Azkaban is brilliant. Also a great movie. The rest are a little hit-and-miss. I mean, they're all great the first time through, but Azkaban stands the test of re-reading. Pheonix . . . not so much. As a whole though, the series is great. I hated the epilogue though.

Jack: I thought it was okay. But I'm a sentimental old fool. So who's your favourite writer? Is it you? Better yet, is it me?
Will: Sorry, Jack, but at the moment, it's Terry Pratchett. The man can do no wrong. He mixes magic with side-splittingly funny innuendo. 'Nuf said. But you ain't too bad yourself . . .

William Kostakis is still the 19 year-old award-winning author of Loathing Lola. In bookstores near me! (And you, but that's less relevent to me, nothing personal.)

By the way, Jack's new video is up in the downloads section. Magic, mayhem, and a whole lotta sass - check it out!

-- 26/08/08

William Kostakis interviews Jack!

He's 19 years old, and he's just had his debut novel published by Pan Macmillan. Sound familiar? Jack sits down with William Kostakis for a chat about books and writing.

Will: If you had to describe yourself, without alluding to the fact that you are both an author and freakishly young to have three books out, what would you say?
Jack: At parties I often lie about my occupation and say that I'm a concrete mixer or an etiquette consultant or a zoo enclosure analyst. But if I was being truthful, without mentioning the books, I'd say I'm just a somewhat shy uni drop-out with a lot of ideas but very little follow-through. Ironically, it's likely no-one would believe me.

Will:The Lab and Remote Control - both action-packed, adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster rides with strong characters - which do you prefer writing . . . the mindless explosions or the character-building high-browy stuff?
Jack: Ooh, that's a tough one. It's hard to separate the two - the explosions are boring if the characters aren't developed, but even well developed characters are boring if they never explode. Or nothing explodes near them, or whatever. Since you've forced my hand, I'd have to say I enjoy writing the action scenes most. Because I can read them again and really feel the excitement. Whereas when I read my own character-development passages, I'm just getting told things I already know.

Will:Is Money Run more of the same, genre-wise and stylistically? If not, what's in it for fans of Agent Six of Hearts?
Jack: Money Run has the same core goals - exciting action, intricate characters, nail-biting dilemmas. But the sci-fi angle has been replaced by gritty realism, and there's more focus on the villains. The language is more experimental, as well, and the story is told from several points of view, which is something I've never done before. So yeah, it's different. Agent Six fans will just have to trust me.

Will: We all know that you spent a long time writing and perfecting The Lab . . . what was the process of writing Money Run? Were you working on it while you developed the others, or is it a fairly recent project?
Jack: I actually started Money Run when I was 17, before The Lab was published. When I was offered a contract, I put the project on hold while I edited The Lab and wrote Remote Control. That was good, because Money Run is more complex than the other books, so the break gave me time to plan. It helped the ideas mature, like a fine wine, or like a bottle of milk left out in the Sun.

Will: How do you write? Do you set time for writing, lock yourself in the attic with a bottle of wine, a pen and a stack of lined pages, or do you just wait for the bursts of creativity - usually resulting in frantic note-taking on napkins / limbs?
Jack: I set some time, and then I switch on my laptop and unplug it. It has a 90 minute battery, and I don't get up until it shuts itself down. If I have no ideas, I do push-ups or go jogging to chase some down, and that usually gets the job done. Every now and again I wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea, and so I get out of bed, find a pen and scribble it on myself before going back to sleep. Unfortunately, in the morning, these midnight gems are usually either incomprehensible or crap.

Will: If you had to rewrite one well-known book or movie . . . which one would you choose, and what would you do?
Jack: I'd love to do a novelisation of a video game, like Portal or Metal Gear Solid. In the former I'd give the mute main character a back story; in the latter, I'd get some of the overly talkative minor characters and take their back stories away. As for movies, I'd like to rewrite something that had a good story but a bad script, like Swordfish, or Silent Hill.

Will: Say you cooked up the ideas for The Lab, Remote Control and Money Run, but were an absolutely horrible writer . . . and you could choose one writer to write them for you, who would you choose? Would they all be written by the same person?
Jack: Matthew Reilly, of course. No one else writes with that much raw energy. But I guess it would depend on which ideas I already had, because different writers are good at different things. If I'd planned out the action scenes but I needed someone to make the characters interesting, I'd choose Chuck Palahniuk. And if I had the characters already but wanted to make the book scarier, I'd pick Dean Koontz. And if I had pretty much everything but wanted to turn the books into comedies, I'd choose Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert. I think together we could make the funniest and most surreal sci-fi series in history.

Will: Something a little less mind-numbingly complicated . . . what were you doing right before this interview? Was it fun, and do you wish you were still doing it?
Jack: I was cooking. I have very little talent for it, but I make up for that with enthusiasm. Or at least, I think that makes up for it - but my friends don't come over anymore. Not since I cooked them nachos made with cornflakes instead of corn chips.

Will: The Twilight series . . . what do you think?
Jack: I don't like fantasy, or romance, or vampires (they're just zombies for pansies. Diet-zombie. Zombie-lite.) As such, I've avoided reading Twilight - but enough people are talking about it now that maybe I should give it a chance. I liked Buffy, after all. So yeah, I'll have to get back to you on this one.

Will: What's next for you? Do you envision Money Run as a one-off thing? Are you interested in a sequel? Have fans of Agent Six of Hearts read the last of him?
Jack: I try to treat each book as a stand-alone thing. But the characters of Money Run all have good reason to be mad at one another by the end (those who survive, anyhow) and it'd be a shame to let that conflict go unexploited. Maybe they'll have a chance to get even in a future book. And as for Agent Six, well, you can't keep a good character down. I know this is a cliche, but he sometimes seems to have a life of his own - and if I stopped writing about him, he might reach out of the page and break my neck. (Never mess with a superhuman.) So I don't think the City has heard the last of him.

William Kostakis is the 19 year-old award-winning author of Loathing Lola. In bookstores near you!

-- 10/08/08

Money Run on shelves!

The wait is over - Money Run is now for sale at a bookstore near you! Assuming, that is, that you have the sense to live in Australia or New Zealand. If you live in the USA, you'll have to wait another three months for The Lab, and, like, fifteen months for Remote Control, and who knows when Money Run will rear its vicious head. And if you live anywhere else in the world, it could be years before bookstores catch on. You know what? Screw waiting. Go to the books section and get them delivered to your doorstep, anywhere in the world¹.

And, here are the four winners of the fanfic comp:

Judge's choice:

Agent Six of Hearts: The Graphic Novel, by Justine Baker.

Secret Mission, by Laurenzo.

People's choice:

The Intruder, by Jayne Barlow.

Mission Impossible, by I am a fan of Jack Heath.

A big thanks to everyone who entered. Winners, your prizes are on the way.

One last thing - Jack has finally completed the soundtrack to Justin Bush's film, Strangers. As promised, a condensed version is available for free from the downloads section. Check it out!

¹Bonus points if you live in an Antarctic military complex and try to get it delivered there. Put the postal service to the test!

-- 01/08/08

Voting starts today!

Entries have now closed for the Agent Six of Hearts fanfiction competition! And you get to decide who wins. Read the stories, and vote below for the one you like best - or, more likely, the one whose author you are friends with. But hurry - voting ends on the day Money Run is released, August 1st. (The launch, by the way, is on July 31st, at Paperchain Bookstore, 34 Franklin Street, Manuka, Canberra, ACT. 5:45pm for a 6 o'clock start - RSVP here.)

Want to read them before voting? A capital idea. Here they are:

The New Kid, by LauraD.

Secret Mission, by Laurenzo.

Agent Six of Hearts: The Graphic Novel, by Justine Baker.

01374, by Christie.

The Friend, by Jayne Barlow.

The Intruder, by Jayne Barlow.

Mission Impossible, by I am a fan of Jack Heath.

Agent Kyntak, by Jessica Giles.

Kynt and Vixsin, by LauraD.

-- 25/07/08

Money Run launch announced!

The launch for Jack's eagerly anticipated¹ third novel has finally been announced: it will be held at Paperchain Bookstore (Manuka, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Australasia, Southern Hemisphere, et cetera) on the 31st of July.

The guest speaker and the exact starting time have yet to be confirmed, but we can tell you this much. There will be plenty of copies of Money Run, and Jack will be there to sign them, every last one. He'll also be signing copies of The Lab, Remote Control, and anything else he can find that has his name on it.

So come one, come all, and bring all your friends - and in the meantime, get writing for the fanfic competition. There's still more than a month before entries close!

¹By him, anyway.

-- 12/06/08

Learn how to write!

A national Australian newspaper, The Age, recently needed someone to make an article for them about how to create mystery and suspense in fiction writing. So, who did they turn to?

Take a guess. (Here's a hint - think about whose website you're currently on.)

Jack's article, creatively entitled How to Create Mystery and Suspense in Fiction Writing, will appear in The Age this Monday, the 2nd of June. It'll be part of a liftout in the education section, but that doesn't mean you can just steal that bit of the paper from someone else. They'll totally notice, and you'll go to prison. Remember, stealing is stealing. And you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag, et cetera.

By the way, this isn't a joke. I mean, that last part was, but there really will be an article by Jack in The Age this Monday. It's not like that last time, when he pretended someone had asked him to interview a fictional character. By the way, if you're telling someone about the fanfic comp, for which entries are still open, send them here, not just to the main page. Because most people are too lazy to scroll down, you see.

-- 30/05/08

Jack writes film soundtrack!

Director/producer Justin Bush has asked Jack to score his latest short film, Strangers. Jack was only too happy to take the job, partly because he has worked with Justin numerous times before, but mostly because he can't say no to a fellow Matthew Reilly fan. Scoring starts once editing is completed later this month.

Here's the good part. When the soundtrack is finished, an edited version will be available from the downloads section of this website. For free. Is that awesome, or what? Stay tuned.

-- 23/05/08

Jack interviews teen competition winner!

No, not the fanfic competition - there's still plenty of time to enter that and maybe win free books. Entries don't close until Thursday the 24th of July (see below for more details). This is something else.

Jack was recently asked by a prominent newspaper to interview a fifteen year-old girl who had won a prestigeous essay competition. He did, and here at jackheath.com.au, we've been given permission to post an extract of the story! To read it, just click the pic, or, if you're non-conformist, these tastefully illuminated words.

-- 06/05/08

Win autographed copies of The Lab and Remote Control!

To celebrate the release of Money Run, we've got four prize packs to give away. Think you can bash out a decent story? Want free books? Read on.

The prize:

A copy of The Lab and Remote Control sent to your doorstep, each signed by Jack with a message of your choosing - makes a fantastic gift. Your story will also be published on myspace.com/jackheath and jackheath.com.au under your name or pseudonym. A great way to get your work noticed.

How to enter:

Write a short story (up to 1000 words) featuring at least one character from The Lab or Remote Control.

Post it on your website, your blog, or on fanfiction.net.

Email the title, your name or pseudonym, and the URL of the story to fanfictioncompetition at jackheath dot com dot au.

That's it!

Entries close on Thursday the 24th of July, and the four winners are announced when Money Run is released on August 1st. Two winners will be chosen by judges (including Jack) and the other two will be chosen by popular online vote. So get writing - once you've read the rules.

And don't be selfish - tell your friends about this competition!

-- 01/05/08

Jack speaks at CBCA!

On Friday May the 2nd, Jack will be appearing at the Children's Book Council of Australia conference in Melbourne! He will be with other young writers Alexandra Adornetto and Aviva Kidd, on a panel chaired by Clare Renner. They will be discussing "How teenagers get published".

A message from Jack:

Hi guys! I'm in trouble - I'm supposed to be on this panel in eight days, and I have no idea what to say. So, here's the deal. Think up an interesting question for me to ask Alexandra, Aviva, Clare, or all of the above. Then email it to questioncomp at jackheath dot com dot au, or post it as a comment on my MySpace profile or my blog. If I think it's good enough, I'll ask them - and if I think it's really good, I'll ask them onstage!
Then I'll write down the answers and post them here. Or try to remember the answers, so I can give you the gist of them. Or something.
Please save me,
Jack

Ever wanted to ask a young writer something? Here's a unique three-for-the-price-of-one opportunity! Enter now!

-- 24/04/08

Money Run release date confirmed!

Jack's publisher, Pan Macmillan Australia, has just confirmed the release date for his upcoming novel, Money Run. It will hit bookstores all over Australia and New Zealand on the 1st of August, 2008. With this announcement comes the first release of the cover art. A US release date is yet to be confirmed.

For more about Money Run, check out the books section of this site.

-- 07/04/08

Jack MCs at book launch!

This Sunday (April 6, 2008) Jack will be launching Attack of the Barbies, a book of short stories, poems and drawings about body image and self-esteem by award-winning young writers. Authors will be reading their works, Jack will be signing books, and there will be free cake for anyone who buys a coffee (this is what originally piqued Jack's interest).

The launch will be held at The Front Cafe in Lyneham, Canberra, Australia, from 3pm to 5pm.

-- 01/04/08

New website

Hello, and welcome to jackheath.com.au! We're finally up and running. Here you'll be able to find the latest news about Jack Heath's novels, his public appearances, and his numerous other projects.

Interested in the Six of Hearts series, or the upcoming novel Money Run? Check out the books section. Want to know more about Jack, and the other things he does? Head to the about page. The downloads section is looking pretty sparse right now, but soon there will be music, pictures, videos of comedy and magic, and that's only the beginning.

And stay tuned to the news page - soon we'll have news on Jack's upcoming film, his tours of Australia and the USA, and of course, his third book (including a release date and sneak peek of the cover design!)

-- 31/03/08