Jason Rohan

About Author

Jason Rohan returns to his action-adventure S.T.E.A.L.T.H. series with a new mission, Storm Rising (Nosy Crow).

When he was 16, Jason Rohan talked his way into an internship at Marvel Comics in New York, where he sold his first story; later he taught English in Japan for five years. He currently works as a mobile telecoms project engineer, building the networks of the future.

Like his characters Arun, Donna and Sam, Jason lives in west London with his wife and five children. In S.T.E.A.L.T.H., he celebrates the city where he was born and raised, and its remarkable ability to absorb countless waves of newcomers and to make them its own

Interview

S.T.E.A.L.T.H.: Rising Storm (Nosy Crow Books)

April 2025

Climate change, activism and a giant robot feature in the third STEALTH adventure, Rising Storm, where the action takes place on an oil rig off the island of Trinidad. Arun, Donna and Sam - ordinary young people caught up in extraordinary adventures - must work together to stop an environmental catastrophe taking place.

ReadingZone spoke with author Jason Rohan to find out what inspires his STEALTH adventures, why he set the latest story in Trinidad, and how he came up with the MANDROID tech at the heart of the series.

Read an extract: STEALTH: Access Denied (book 1); STEALTH: Ice Breaker (book 2); STEALTH: Rising Storm (book 3)

Q&A with Jason Rohan

"I'm a huge fan of the Mission: Impossible and Fast and Furious films and I wanted to write a book that read like you were
watching a film and played out in real time.

1. Can you tell us a little about your S.T.E.A.L.T.H series and what happens in each of the adventures, including the latest book, STEALTH: Rising Storm?

S.T.E.A.L.T.H. - with all the dots - is a code name for a team which officially doesn't exist. There is a meaning behind the letters but that has yet to be revealed, although the kids in the team do make a couple of guesses. The other meaning behind the title is that the heroes make use of a stealth vehicle, completely undetectable to radar or any other form of electronic tracking.

Book one (Access Denied) starts with a kidnapping and, as the kids set out to try and effect a rescue, they stumble across a wider plot to steal the stealth device and end up taking control of it themselves while trying to outwit the kidnappers.
Book two (Ice Breaker) starts with the team, and the stealth vehicle, now working for the British Secret Service. When an avalanche traps a goods train in an Alpine tunnel, only the STEALTH team has the equipment to mount a rescue. However, nothing is as it seems and the team finds itself up against a dangerous squad of mercenaries with a daring plan to steal the train and its cargo.
Book three (Rising Storm) - the latest book - has the kids taking time off to visit the sunny Caribbean only to find themselves caught up in a plan by environmental terrorists to destroy an oil rig while a hurricane bears down.

2. MANDROID - the name given to the STEALTH device - is a wonderful invention. What can he do, and what inspired you to create him? How did you come up with his name?

I grew up in the seventies and, with the Cold War going on, there were a lot of acronyms around, both real ones, such as NATO, SALT and NASA, as well as fictional ones like UNCLE, SPECTRE and SHIELD. I was always fascinated by the challenge involved in choosing words to fit the letters and I used to invent my own for spy stories I wrote in middle school. MANDROID is the stealth vehicle and the name stands for Mobile Armour: National Defence/Rescue Operations - Initial Design. It took me ages to decide on that!

As for what it can do, it's an incredibly advanced piece of technology which is able to configure itself into a huge number of different forms, such as an aeroplane, submarine, bulldozer, spacecraft and giant robot, among others. I drew a lot of inspiration from Japanese anime and manga, which has lots of mecha devices. Most readers will be familiar with the Transformers franchise, but how many know the toys were originally from Japan?

My other main inspiration for the stories was the Thunderbirds TV show I had grown up with. I wanted to do a modern twist with natural disasters, daring rescues, car chases, Mission: Impossible style stunts and a team of kids, but I couldn't rationalise a large group each piloting a different craft, so the idea of one vehicle which could adopt multiple forms was my workaround.

3. Who are the young people at the heart of this story, and what are each of their special talents?

The three main characters - Arun, Donna and Sam - are Year Sevens when we first meet them, and they are ordinary kids. I deliberately didn't want to go down the Alex Rider route of having them be good at everything and I wanted them to be recognisably normal, even down to having roadman banter and falling out with each other.

That said, the one thing they do have in common is that they are all very clever, in different ways. Arun is booksmart, being a bit of a neek. He's one of those kids who can explain nuclear fusion but struggle to tie his laces. Donna is streetsmart. She can hotwire a car, pick locks and win punch ups by fighting dirty. She's a force of nature and you wouldn't want to get on her wrong side. Sam has high emotional intelligence. He's naturally cautious, empathetic and caring.

Together, they make a formidable team and I like to think of them as each representing the brain, the heart and the soul. The other side of this is in classic giant robot stories, you have a pilot, a navigator and an engineer, so they also fit into those roles, too.

4. Why did you decide to set the latest adventure, Rising Storm, in Trinidad? How well do you know the island; many people would be surprised to hear there are oil rigs off its coast?

My parents came to the UK in the 1960s as part of the Windrush generation and my mother is from the island of Trinidad, which she always referred to as "back home". I still have family there and have visited occasionally so it's a place I know, although it has been a long time since I was last there.

Despite the many links between the UK and the Caribbean, the islands rarely appear in stories and, when they do, it tends to be the more touristy places like Jamaica and Barbados. I wanted to balance that a little and give Trinidad some space, since it has a lot of history and natural beauty. It's also been quite well-off due to the discovery of oil over a hundred years ago, which is one reason it never really needed to promote tourism.

5. Why did you decide to give this story such a strong environmental angle, involving an oil rig and threatened oil catastrophe?

I get a lot of my ideas from reading the news and seeing what is happening around me. The single greatest threat to the world, as we know it, is climate change and I don't think anyone can seriously argue against that. We have floods in the Australian desert, vanishing ice caps in Greenland, uncontrollable wildfires in the US, droughts in Africa, deadly heatwaves in Asia.

We get told that these are once-in-a-generation events, yet they are happening more and more frequently. The fossil fuel companies have switched from denying that climate change is happening, to arguing that we can't say for sure what is causing it, to saying it's too late to do anything about it.

As a parent, I have real concerns for the future and the world we are leaving for our children, yet at the same time I understand that money buys power and that the oil industry commands immense wealth. Being a writer, I find groups like Just Stop Oil, Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion dramatically appealing as Davids standing up to Goliath and it's easy to see how some might be tempted to resort to extreme measures, given the severity of the situation.

The best villains are the heroes of their own stories and the idea of an environmental terrorist who is willing to burn down an oil rig to bring about change made a lot of sense to me, however warped that may be.

6. Through the adventure, we learn a lot about oil rigs and how they work. How did you go about researching this, and what else did you need to find out about in order to write this novel?

I've often joked that writers know a little bit about a lot of things rather than a lot about a few things. When approaching a book like this, you have to become an instant expert if you want it to feel authentic and to convey what the setting looks, feels, smells and sounds like.

I started with a lot of reading about how oil is formed, how the extraction industry developed and what the different methods are for offshore drilling, including the different types of rig. I watched YouTube videos about life on oil rigs, as well as documentaries about the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. I read books by oil workers recounting their experiences and I went to the websites of oil companies and their suppliers and partners. Finally, I was able to visit a disused oil rig that had been towed into harbour at Weston-super-mare.

Other reading about the environmental impact of the oil industry and the history of climate change denial was important for me to understand the desperation of the eco-terrorists. I have no doubt that the people being vilified by governments now for taking direct action against climate change will be viewed as heroes in centuries to come, much like the suffragettes.

Lastly, I had to pick up some travel guides, watch some more YouTube videos and reach out to my cousins to make sure I portrayed Trinidad, its people and culture correctly.

7. How did you go about writing such action-packed adventures, and keep the pace up throughout Rising Storm? Are there any plans for a film version of STEALTH?

I originally wrote STEALTH for my sons, who were both in junior school at the time. I would write a chapter every few days and present it to them and they would say, "More action, Dad. It needs more action." Since they were the target audience, I duly obliged, but when I took it to a publisher, they said, "Too much action!" and I had to cut chunks out.

As a comics geek who has worked in the industry, I'm used to fast-moving, high-octane, breathless action adventures with high concepts and crazy extended stunt sequences. I'm a huge fan of the Mission: Impossible and Fast and Furious films and I wanted to write a book that read like you were watching a film and played out in real time. Above all, I wanted to write in a way that would grab the reader and not let go until the end. We hear so much about younger people not wanting to read any more so the challenge is to write books they would want to read.

There's an old joke which I like: 'do you want to know the secret of keeping someone in suspense? I'll tell you later'. I've taken that to heart when writing stories. Some of the tricks I use to keep up the pace throughout a story is to continually raise the stakes, ratchet up the danger and to leave things hanging, sometimes literally, before coming back.

While there are no plans for a film version of STEALTH, I do think it would easily translate to the screen because I write in a visual way, courtesy of my comics background. I also don't write with any budget in mind, so I always go big!

8. There are still unanswered questions at the end of Rising Storm. What else do you have planned for the group, and their next adventure with MANDROID?

I'm glad you noticed that I've left a few loose ends. I originally mapped out a six-book arc for the series with detailed plans for where it would go and how it would all fit together, but it's all classified top secret so I can't say any more. What I can say is that if STEALTH finds its audience and they demand it, then there will be more to come.

9. If you found the camper van version of MANDROID hidden in your back garden, where would you want it to take you?

What a wonderful question! I had itchy feet when I was younger and I travelled a lot, so I've been to many of the places I wanted to see. However, one place I've not been to is Africa so I'd let MANDROID take me on safari to see the African plains with its herds of zebra, wildebeest, elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, lions, hippos, buffalo and cheetah while they still exist in the wild.

10. And what keeps you happy in your quieter times, away from your laptop? Where do you go to seek out creative inspiration for your next novel?

As a father of five, I don't have much in the way of quieter times. Even as they grow older, they still need pick ups, drop offs, fetch this, take that, but I don't mind. Fast forward another few decades and it'll be the other way around!

I do like to go to the cinema, take long walks and get into London, when I can, but I still have a day job to keep me busy. Most of my ideas come from the real world, looking at the news and asking what if? Then I follow the thread and see where it leads…

School events: I love school events as there's nothing more gratifying for me than sharing the love of reading, and inspiring the next generation of storytellers. I can be reached on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or via my agent or publisher. Thank you.

Here's more about the STEALTH series: Jason Rohan talks gadgets, gaming and cutting-edge science - and reads from Book 1 of STEALTH: Access Denied! (Nosy Crow)

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