Matt Dickinson
About Author
Matt Dickinson is a writer and film maker with an enduring (and occasionally dangerous) fascination for people who push the limits.
As a film maker he has worked extensively for National Geographic Television, the Discovery Channel and the BBC and is one of the very few director/cameramen who have ever filmed on the summit of Mount Everest.
The bestselling account of his ascent of Everest's deadly North Face was published as The Death Zone in the UK, and The Other Side of Everest in the US.
Matt's writing credits also include two novels: High Risk and Black Ice, both published by Random House (UK) and in numerous foreign editions.
The first in his adrenaline-fuelled series for teens, Mortal Chaos, was published by OUP in March 2012. Matt went on to explore his own Everest ascent through his novel The Everest Files, which was published by Vertebrate Publishing in 2014.
Interview
THE EVEREST FILES
VERTEBRATE PUBLISHING
APRIL 2014
The Everest Files begins with 18-year-old gap student Ryan setting off to deliver supplies to a village in the Himalayas. Once there he is drawn into a mystery involving the whereabouts of a young Sherpa man, Kami, who disappeared after helping a US politician to ascend Mount Everest. Ryan agrees to help find out what has happened to Kami and, in doing so, uncovers a story of ambition, betrayal and tragedy.
Author and cameraman Matt Dickinson, who based parts of the story on his own Everest ascent, talked to us about his new novel which is aimed at readers aged 11 years plus.
Q: After a life of adventure and exploration, what took you into writing for teenagers?
A: I was always a fanatical reader as a teenager and I can honestly say that books changed my life because that's how I discovered adventure, through reading about what other people were doing. I started with books by people like Arthur Ransome and Willard Price and moved on to non-fiction books about adventure, climbing and exploring. There was no one in my family doing anything like this, not in a big way, so it came to me through reading.
When my three oldest boys were teenagers I was writing books for adults but I wondered if I could write for teenagers and that's when I started writing Mortal Chaos but it took years to finish and get it published.
Then I thought about writing about my Everest ascent as I had a lot of resources to support that like the filming I had done on Everest and my other climbing work. I have spent 20 years making films for National Geographic and the Discovery channel, specializing in adventure and climbing which has not been without its risks and I've been close to death on several occasions.
Q: What is it about Everest that makes it such compelling subject matter?
A: This is the fourth book I have written that is set on Everest so it gives some indication of the impact that Everest has had on my life and how rich the subject is. It's a powerful and compelling place, and it has some interesting background material for fiction. Having been to the mountain and the summit, and having made a film there, I feel that Everest is really worth writing about.
I first went to the Everest region when I was 17 but 1990 was the first time I actually saw the mountain. I also met some people who had summitted Everest, there were just a few dozen people in the world at that time who had been to the top of the mountain, and the more I read about it, the more I felt I had to go there and experience it.
I looked for a way to get there and saw an opportunity when I heard they were making a film with Brian Blessed climbing Everest, but it was not meant to have been a high altitude experience for me, as a cameraman, and I was not meant to go to the top, so it was a massive learning curve for me when I did!
The problem was that Brian didn't get to the top so we didn't have the end of our film; he had to give up, there was a big storm and 12 people died, but through all that I had this burning desire to get the cameras to the top. Climbing Everest took me to the edge of my physical and emotional limits but I learned a lot about myself and the mountain.
An experience like that does twist your perspective of the world and you learn things about yourself that you might not like. For me, the main thing was how much Everest dominated my thoughts, I was obsessed by it and I deliberately put my life in danger in the quest to reach the summit. I know how dangerous this obsession can be and I show this through Ryan and Kami's stories; Ryan will follow through his obsession to climb Everest in the next book that I'm writing.
Q: How much have things changed on Everest since your first visit?
A: The mountain is becoming more commercial for everybody. Everest has built massive wealth for Nepal and transformed the area, which was a poor mountain economy, to one that is quite wealthy. But the other side to this is that the mountain is sacred, a symbol of their religion and faith, but it is becoming a cash cow and the way that is affecting the region culturally is not good. You now have the internet in every village and Sherpas are fighting to get onto the climbs; you are either an impoverished farmer farming marginal lands, or you're making thousands of pounds working on the mountains.
Q: How hard was it to write about a distinct culture, the Sherpas, without having lived there?
A: I have spent quite a lot of time in Sherpa villages, including a visit I made a couple of years ago. I didn't have any problems developing my lead character, Kami, who is a Sherpa, once I had decided to focus on the growing relationship between Kami and Shreeya; it's a love story that could work in any background or cultural backdrop. The reader goes into the story through Western eyes with the narrator Ryan, because I wanted Western readers to easily find a way in to Kami's story.
Q: You cast a critical gaze on American PR-spin; did you have your experiences of this?
A: I found that a lot of Americans go to Everest for a secondary reason; they know they can write a book about it and can get on the lecture circuit. For politicians, the reason is it will increase their popularity ratings if they manage to ascend but I ask, what if it goes wrong?
Q: How hard was it to keep your story true to life in terms of a real Everest ascent?
A: The trickiest thing to write about in the book is the number of times you need to go up and down to the different camps on Everest in order to acclimatise; so how much of the real nature of the expedition do I write about without getting boring? It's repetitive, so how do you move on the story but keep it as authentic as possible?
There is one point in the story when Kami makes it down from Everest and although he's exhausted, he's ordered back up the mountain to retrieve the climbers' tents - which is what actually happens. One of the editors wanted me to cut out that part but I really felt it was an important part of the story; I wanted it to be about the journey that Sherpas make as well, what each trip up Everest involves for them.
Q: Do you hope that your book will inspire other young people to discover adventure in real life?
A: I believe that adventure is important in young people's lives and it's important for me as a parent to five children, I want to encourage them to get adventure into their lives and to encourage their imagination in the way they explore the world.
The danger in the way we educate children and our risk-averse culture is that we risk losing the opportunity for children to have adventures - we make them not want to do things like heading out to go trekking. So to hear someone talking about doing it could be an important experience for them.
I visit every type of school, from inner city schools to public schools, and I have never done an event without at least one pupil coming up to me afterwards and saying, 'I really want to do that'. I hope that through my events and speaking about things like this that I am giving something back.
I am in the process of developing an Everest reading challenge with a literary consultant, designed for years 7 and 8, with the thought that each student will get a book and a poster and they have to complete various 'challenges' on the poster, including facts about the Himalayas and climbing. The idea is that I will visit the school once the students have completed their posters and perhaps choose a winner.
Q: What was the writing process like for this book and where are you with the sequel?
A: I started writing The Everest Files in 2008 and found it a really smooth process. I always start on the parts of the plot that I know will be easy and I build from there, so I started with the scenes in the mountains and during my journey to Nepal I found other key scenes, like arm wrestling and the destroyed village that the US politician sees and which I saw a couple of years ago.
I am still working on the story for the second book but there will be more teenage characters in the next one. Ryan has to find a way to get to Mount Everest but he has had no training and no budget and as he's looking into the possibilities for getting there, he finds out about a TV reality programme looking for teenagers to ascend Everest; so this time we will have a TV mogul and a bunch of kids going up. It is in some measure achievable as a 13 year old is the youngest to have climbed Everest.
Q: What is the most awe-inspiring place you've been to?
A: The most inspirational place I've ever been is Antarctica, I filmed there in 1994. It was the most amazing experience; we sailed there in a small sailing boat and we were 1,000s of miles from people, climbing unclimbed peaks. I'd love to go back there!
The Everest Files: A thrilling journey to the dark side of Everest
