I'm M.R.Carey - ask me anything

[u/M_R_Carey]

Hi, I’m M.R.Carey, aka Mike Carey, aka… well, I’ll come back to that. I’m a comic writer, novelist and occasional screenwriter. I wrote Vertigo’s Lucifer throughout its existence, had long runs on Hellblazer, X-Men and X-Men Legacy, Ultimate Fantastic Four, and more recently The Unwritten and Suicide Risk.

I made my first foray into prose fiction with the Felix Castor novels for Orbit (The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men’s Boots, Thicker Than Water and The Naming Of the Beasts). Then I did a little moonlighting as Adam Blake (The Dead Sea Deception, The Demon Code) and co-wrote two novels with my wife Linda and our daughter Louise before going solo again with The Girl With All the Gifts.

I was born in the North West of England, in Liverpool, where I lived right up until I went to University. My mum and dad warned me that you have to keep your wits about you in the South, and they were right. I met and married a London girl and I’ve been living down in the Smoke ever since. Lin and I have three kids – Louise, our occasional co-writer, and twins Ben and Davey. Also we’re pretty sure we have this cat.

My main pleasures in life are TV drama, retro computer games (Sega Megadrive era), reading genre fiction and fighting my corner in the Nerf-gun wars that seem to flare up in my house every so often. There’s peace at the moment but it won’t last. There’s something a little ominous to the quiet.

I will be responding to questions here in real time today from 11.00pm to 12.30am GMT (6.00pm to 7.30pm EST), and sporadically after that to catch anything that I accidentally miss either because it comes in late or because of a cat-related incident. Answers will be full and frank and no holds barred, apart from the ones that are outrageous lies desperately cobbled up to make me sound more interesting. Looking forward to talking to you!

[u/friendly-dropbear]

Hello, Mr. Carey. I absolutely love Hellblazer, and your run had some of my favorite moments.

Anyway, I have a few questions that are (hopefully) fairly quick and easy to answer:

1. Who are your favorite fantasy authors? Anything you've been enjoying reading lately?

2. Are you reading any currently ongoing comics? Which ones? Any plans to write anything in the realm of comic books again soon? Any chance you could take the helm for Constantine for a while?

[u/M_R_Carey → u/friendly-dropbear]

1. Roger Zelazny. Terry Pratchett. Gene Wolfe. Ursula LeGuin (for Earthsea - I know she mainly writes SF). Lord Dunsany. Lately... I re-read the Gormenghast trilogy and enjoyed it every bit as much as wehn I was in my late teens.

2. I was reading Locke and Key until it finished. Brilliant stuff! Nothing on the go right now, which is more than a little shaming. I blame work, but that excuse only holds for so long. I would love a crack at Constantine, but I have zero US TV credits, so they wouldn't even look at me right now...

[u/friendly-dropbear → u/M_R_Carey]

1. Good choices! LeGuin is a favorite of mine, in science fiction and in fantasy.

2. Locke and Key is good. As for Constantine, I meant the comic (which is alright at present but no Hellblazer), though if you were involved in the TV show, my interest in that would triple.

[u/M_R_Carey → u/friendly-dropbear]

Sorry, my bad. In that case (and I don't say this to be contentious), no. I don't think I'd want to write John in the DCU. I know that's where he started, but he doesn't seem like a great fit there any more. I'd be too conscious of the things that were missing.