Max Brooks: Guy has to think and then talk through everything, and Summer is a do-er. The Mountain was a lot easier because I could have the back and forth of real conversation!Īlex: Yeah, you have a whole new character! Can you describe Summer? She is very different to Guy. I must have done ten rewrites because the character was initially a Robinson Crusoe, and I wrote my first draft in the voice of Daniel Defoe, which is very dry and boring! (Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719!) I had to figure out a way of writing someone alone on an island with their thoughts, and so I invented Guy's animal friends – all the conversations with Moo are basically his thoughts projected onto this cow. But writing The Island was actually a lot tougher than The Mountain. Max Brooks: You know, I imagined there’d be a sequel as I wrote it, because I figured that learning how to live with yourself is just the first part of growth. I went to high school with Sean Astin and Jack Black, so having us all here is a class reunion.Īlex: What a class that must have been! Was it difficult to write a sequel to The Island? Max Brooks: Yes! Sean Astin reads The Mountain audiobook (check out his tweet about recording it!). I’m very dyslexic, so to get back into the language and tone, and to reintroduce me to the character, I listened to the audiobook of The Island over and over again to get me back into how Guy sounds and how he thinks.Īlex: Oh, Jack Black read the audiobook, didn’t he? The challenge was that I’d never written a sequel before. Max Brooks: I always knew that in the next book the character has to leave the island, because growth couldn’t come from being in a comfort zone. But I had to first ask about what in the Overworld Guy is thinking when he decides to set out on his boat at the start of the book.Īlex: Why did he have to leave the island? It was nice there! I talked with Max about how he found a great story in the clash of Guy and Summer’s personalities, and why that story is important in our pandemic-ridden times.
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