Charlie Higson
About Author
Charlie Higson is well-known as a comic and an author of adult thrillers. He lived on the same estate as the young Harry Enfield and when Enfield's stand-up character Stavros was booked for 'Saturday Night Live', he invited Hickson and his friend Paul Whitehouse to write for him. The pair went on to write for Enfield's own show and many other TV favourites. Higson soon went on to show his talent for acting, and plays Ralph and Swiss Toni in the BBC's 'Fast Show'.
When the Fleming Estate approached him to write a Young Bond series Higson jumped at the chance and the series, starting with SILVERFIN, was born. The young James is not a spy but he does get into thrilling and dangerous adventures they obviously prepared him well for his future career!
Ian Fleming's James Bond is an iconic figure, a literary creation known to most young people once the hugely successful books became even more popular films.
Author link
Interview
ReadingZone
September 2009
Charlie Higson, best known as an author for his Young Bond books, talks to ReadingZone.com about a new trilogy which launches with The Enemy this month, published by Puffin.
A mysterious plague has swept through London, killing most of the adults but not people under 14 years. Adults who survive are turned into zombie-like monsters, roaming the streets on the hunt for fresh meat - including children. In this eerie landscape, groups of ill-protected children are battling to survive.
Q: In this story, the children have the run of London, even Buckingham Palace. Is that something that appeals to you?
A: I've always been fascinated with the idea of 'what if everyone disappeared and you had the run of London'? I wrote a couple of sci-fi books when I was a teenager - they were really awful - but they explored the idea of a post-apocalyptic London where the infrastructure was still intact and you could go and live in Buckingham Palace because all the adults had disappeared.
Q: Why did you want to write a horror story?
A: After writing the Young Bond books I realised that I wanted to write something really scary in the horror vein. I thought about zombies because my son, Sidney, is obsessed with zombies. Instead of playing 'It' in the playground, they play 'zombies'. If someone touches you, you turn into a zombie. So The Enemy begins as horror story although it then becomes more of an adventure story. But I am always looking for ways to make it scary.
With the Young Bond books, you always know that James Bond will survive, so it's nice to come up with a cast of characters and to make it clear to the reader that any one of them could die. That makes it quite tense.
Q: Did you find it hard to kill off some of the characters?
A: I do get attached to the characters and it can be hard to kill them off, yes. You put a lot into making each character distinctive and so you get to know them well, and then you have to start again with a whole new group of characters.
Q: Some parts are really gory - did you worry about that at all?
A: I can get away with some of the more extreme parts of the story (children getting eaten by adults, for example) because this is fantasy. Also, the boundaries of what you can write about have moved. You get all sorts of things in books that wouldn't have seen the light of day a little while ago. Sidney, my son, helped me with the book and he loved the gruesome parts. If I had written it his way, we'd have had people being killed randomly on every page...
Q: Do you think young people would be this organised in a disaster situation?
A: The story begins after a period of chaos and the young people have reached the stage where they are better equipped to survive, so they are quite organised. I think that children probably would become quite organised in a post-disaster situation, they would have to. If you look around the world today, you sadly have many groups of children who have been through wars or natural disasters and are having to cope, to survive, and in many instances to look after children younger than themselves.
Q: Will we ever find out what caused the plague?
A: In the first book, we only know what the children know. They are trying to find out what is going on and what their future might hold and that becomes a big part of the story. We don't know what is happening to the adults, what has made them ill. I hope that by book ten we will know where the plague came from....
Q: Are you planning more than three books, then?
A: So far I've agreed three books with the publisher, Puffin, but I have lots of ideas for where we can go after that and how to explore the world that these children are growing up in. That will depend on how well these books are received and you can never guarantee anything!
Q: Can you give us any clues about what happens in book two?
A: Briefly, then. At the end of The Enemy you see groups of children coming together for support, but the adults are also becoming more organised so we see a battle emerging between the two 'armies' and that is where we move in the second book.
Q: Are you planning any more Young Bond books?
A: I'd like to write some more but I have to think about it quite carefully becasue I've only got a narrow point of time to work in. At the end of the last book (,By Royal Command', Puffin), James Bond leaves Eton and he's almost an adult and I have to be careful about some of the themes I cover in these books...
Q: Do you still have time to do your television work?
A: Yes, very much so, it's something I can do while Im not writing (that's the theory, anyway!). Ive got a new comedy series airing in the autumn called Bellamys People, based on R4s Down the Line phone-in host Gary Bellamy. It plays on all the 'famous people exploring Britain' television series that have been made over the last few years and theres a lot of improvisation in it. It was great fun to do. Writing is quite a solitary experience so I enjoyed having that time of working with other people again.
