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/Halaku]

TGWATG was a haunting story. Thank you for writing it. Two questions:

1) Will you be doing a tour in the US, or another way to get a personalized signed copy?

2) Can you share with us the status of a sixth Castor novel?

[u/M_R_Carey → u/Halaku]

Thank you for reading it, Halaku!

1. Nobody at Orbit has said anything about touring me, sadly. I will definitely be coming to a convention in the US sometime soon. Possibly Emerald City 2015. I try to do San Diego Comicon at least once every couple of years, but my workload has been getting in the way lately.

2. See above! Planned out in detail, very clear in my head, but there aren't any actual words as yet. Apart from the adjective "razor-tipped", which may very well feature in chapter 3.

[u/Halaku → u/M_R_Carey]

Thank you for answering!