Peter Jay Black
About Author
Peter Jay Black loves gadgets, films, and things that make him laugh so hard he thinks he might pass out. He trained as an electronics engineer and one day, a team of super-skilled kids popped into his head. He brought them to life in a Hollywood apartment. He is now a full time writer but in his spare time, Peter enjoys collecting unusual artifacts like Neolithic Arrow Heads, Ancient Egyptian Rings, and Fossilised Dinosaur Poo.
Author link
www.urbanoutlawsbunker.com/author
Interview
URBAN OUTLAWS: LOCKDOWN
BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN'S BOOKS
SEPTEMBER 2015
Lockdown is the third book in the Urban Outlaws series; fast-paced and gadget-laden adventures about a small group of tough, highly talented teenagers and their missions.
Lockdown can be read as a stand-alone book but readers will get more from the adventure if they have already read the first two books in the series, Urban Outlaws and Blackout, in which the Urban Outlaws over-ride a computer virus to get a super-computer working only to then have to steal back the same virus from a criminal hacker.
The series will grip readers who love adventure and gadgets, from upper primary through to early secondary years (ages 10+).
Here, we speak to author Peter Jay Black to find out more about his writing and the Urban Outlaws series:
Q: What took you into writing for young people?
A: Well, I failed pretty much all my exams at school, probably because I was such a day dreamer and a bit lazy. I was always good creatively, making and working with things, but nothing grabbed my attention enough to make me want to work at it. I went into electronics when I left school and I enjoyed it but when I got to 29, I realised that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do.
I couldn't be a scientist but I thought I could do the next best thing which was to write about people who did science. I already loved science but I also needed to know about writing. That meant catching up with spelling, grammar and all those skills that I hadn't got while I was at school.
It took me eight years but I found my writing was getting better and better the more I wrote. I also wrote plays, to improve my dialogue, and one of those got published. Then one day I told a friend that I had this idea for a story about five teenagers who had lots of different tools and gadgets they could bring to the story. I wrote the first draft then I took myself off to Hollywood to finish it.
Q: Why did you want to be in Hollywood to write Urban Outlaws?
A: I liked being in the US and I am a huge fan of films so I figured that if I was in Hollywood, I would always be motivated and entertained. Plus it reminded me that I wanted to keep my book simple, fast-paced and as close to a movie as I could.
Q: Did you read much other young adult fiction to get a sense of what young people are reading?
A: I have read three books in my entire life: James Herbert's The Rats, which I read when I was far to young to do so but my friends said I should; Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke, which I read in my late teens; and Codex by Lev Grossman, which I read about ten years ago.
While I've always struggled to read, I love audio books and I've listened to thousands of those, although the only children's books I've listened to are the Harry Potter books.
I'm an auditory learner - I wish I'd known that years ago - so when I'm writing now, I read my work out loud and I know when the plot is too fast, two slow or when it works. For me, listening to words is almost like listening to music; the rhythm and cadence have to be right.
Q: Can you tell us about the series so far?
A: The first book in the Urban Outlaws series sets the scene. The group comes across a bad guy, Del Sarto, who is trying to steal a sophisticated computer. You think that they have got the better of him at the end of the first book, but in book two they are up against his son, Hector. By book three, which is set in New York, Hector has got his hands on a sophisticated computer virus that allows him to hack into anything. The Urban Outlaws must get it away from him.
Q: So who are the Urban Outlaws?
A: They are five kids doing what they think is right and sometimes it's morally correct and sometimes there are grey areas that they have to work through to achieve the moral outcome.
When I was putting together the group of outlaws, I was reminded of Victorian crime gangs and how each person in the gang had a specific role. There was always a safe cracker and someone who would climb through windows, for example.
Jack is the mission planner and computer specialist. Then I knew I'd need an electronics expert to help the gang get into buildings, that's Charlie. Obi is the communications chief and hacks into CCTV cameras to keep an eye out for bad guys. Next, they needed someone to physically climb in through windows and scale buildings, that became Slink. Lastly, I thought they should also have a 'decoy' person like they had in the Victorian era, and that's Wren.
Each of the books has a subplot, which focuses on a specific character from the group and allows the reader to find out more about them. The first book focuses on Wren, who is the youngest member of the group, and shows how she comes to be part of Urban Outlaws. The next book is about Obi, who 'project manages' each of their exploits, and the latest one is about Slink and his mum.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for the Bunker where the Urban Outlaws live?
A: That came into the story because I was wondering how to have this group of young people running around London whose talents are so off the scale they are almost like superheroes. How do you allow them to do that without adult supervision? So they had to come from broken homes. Jack and Charlie meet in a children's home and that's how it starts.
I wanted them to have somewhere that was hidden from the world, so they get this amazing bunker - rooms that were once part of the old Underground network, below the city. It's also almost Victorian in the way that they can follow underground sewers and pop up in different parts of London.
The Outlaws become a family, they look after each other, they are their own foster family, and they needed a home. I like that the Bunker is believable because there really are lots of forgotten and hidden rooms under London from the old Tube network.
Q: Why did you want to bring so many gadgets and electronics into the story?
A: The young people in this group are super geniuses and I love having characters who are almost super heroes - although everything they can do is based on reality. Anything is achievable electronically so they have lots of gadgets.
That was inspired by my childhood. I grew up surrounded by bits of machinery as my dad was a design engineer and he was really clever, off the scale genius. He created hundreds of designs for machines for different companies. What Charlie does in the books is pretty much what my dad could do.
In the first book, for example, Charlie designs some 'spring shoes' that Slink borrows to jump an impossible gap during one of their missions. That idea, for the spring shoes came from something I remembered discussing with my dad when I was a kid and we talked about how they could be designed. I also remember the things I saw in his workshop as a kid, like these massive rocket launchers - which I also saw being tested out.
One of my dad's inventions that I was most fond of - and which I helped him to develop - was a bath lift to help elderly people to get in and out of baths. It was all operated by levers, no electricity was needed, and we sold many of them to shops and physiotherapists.
Q: What's next for the Urban Outlaws?
A: At the moment we have five books planned in the Urban Outlaws series and I have already written the fourth book, which is called Counterstrike and which will be published in April 2016.
I get asked by students if I'm planning to kill off any members of the group as the series progresses but it's genuinely nice to write about them as they are. What I will say about future books is that it can only get worse for the Urban Outlaws from here on in. Things will get tighter and trickier and they will have to lose things to gain things ...
Q: Where's your favourite place to write?
A: Sometimes I just stay in my arm chair in the lounge and write with the dogs at my feet. I can set up an 'office' anywhere really, as long as I've got my laptop. But my ideal writing place would probably be somewhere quiet with no distractions where the dogs can run around, so perhaps a fairly isolated lake somewhere?
Q: What do you enjoy doing when you're not writing?
A: I like collecting things, I pick up fossils, but my main hobby used to be writing which I did in the evenings. When I became a full time writer I lost my hobby - so now in the evenings I just write something completely different from what I wrote during the day.
I enjoy writing and I'm a bit obsessed by it. That's my passion, apart from watching films and listening to books. I love the Harry Potter films, or anything sci-fi, and I really liked The Abyss directed by James Cameron.
I also enjoy travelling and we've just come back from Disney World. We go to the US at least once a year.
Lockdown
