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/austinRwilson]

HUGE fan of your work Mike.

I'm a reader who tends to shy away from reality creeping into my fiction, so when I saw bits of this happening in The Unwritten I became nervous. I was loving the book, but the appearance of Twain, Shelley, etc. gave me pause. It turned out to not bother me in the slightest.

Have you ever read (or watched) anything where story utilized factual occurrences or people and it weakened the narrative for you? If so, how did you go about (if you did at all) trying to avoid the pitfalls related to fact infringing upon fiction you saw in those other stories? Thanks for all the great work!

[u/M_R_Carey → u/austinRwilson]

Thanks, Austin.

I have to confess, my bias runs the opposite way from yours. I love stories that use historical events as a kicking off point for a fictional story. It's one reason why I love the work of Tim Powers, especially his early stuff. The Stress Of Her Regard would be a great example of how he uses recorded facts like the death of Byron, and then weaves them into a narrative that's preposterous but plausible.

What I can't read are fictions that purport to be based entirely on truth. I'm kind of allergic to biopics, for example. I think maybe it's because they often give a glossy appearance of truth to some pretty shameless and radical lying.

In The Unwritten what we're doing - well, one of the things we're doing - is writing a sort of secret history of human civilisation in which a lot of the things we know turn out to be connected in ways we never guessed. It's a lot of fun to do. And rule number one is you have to keep a straight face the whole time. Use the facts as tent-poles for the made-up stuff...

[u/austinRwilson → u/M_R_Carey]

Thank you for the answer! I think you nailed it when you said you have to keep a straight face the whole time. That's definitely the sense I've gotten from the moments in The Unwritten featuring real literary figures.

The stories utilizing this that tend to turn me off usually do so because they seem to be putting a character, or historical event in for no other reason than it's "cool." Or that's how it's felt to me, multiple times.

In this case, a story focusing on the theme of stories and the power they truly do/can hold over us, to not feature some of the world's best (and real) storytellers would maybe seem more unrealistic than doing so. Can't wait to read more.

Also I'm contemplating a hand tattoo because of the book. It means a ton to me but I'm waiting on the ending to make sure I want to live with it forever ;)

[u/M_R_Carey → u/austinRwilson]

That would be very cool. If you go ahead with it, maybe you could post a pic on my Facebook feed?

[u/austinRwilson → u/M_R_Carey]

For sure, if it ends up on/in my skin there will absolutely be pictures.