It’s (not) Monday and we have our scheduled King’s C.R.O.W.N.ing Authors (Cajoling Random Observations Now) interview. Please welcome Marcus Sedgwick.
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1. What song defines your teen soul?
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I’ve been trying to fight it, but I guess it would have to be ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ by the The Smiths. First gig I ever went to was a very early Smiths gig – still one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to.
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2. Which weapon is better a pen or a fist?
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The pen, of course. Because you can kill a person, but if their ideas have been planted in the minds of others, they become immortal, and there’s no better way to disseminate ideas than through writing.
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3. When was the last time you did something that scared you? (And yes reading Goodreads counts!)
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Oh golly. About a year ago, I went snorkelling in a tropical ocean. This might sound fun to most people, but I have a lifelong aversion to sea creatures, so I had to overcome that. It was interesting but I won’t be doing it again.
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4. Have you ever danced around a camp fire?
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Yes indeed. Camping wild is one of the most wonderful things you can do, given the weather behaves. When I was about twenty, I slept out in a forest in the deep Polish countryside by a campfire, without a tent, and just a couple of friends. Magical.
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5. What book would you like to read again?
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Not that many! Sadly. But there are two books I could read and re-read forever; Moby Dick by Herman Melville and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. ;
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6. Do you do any exercise to keep your fingers nimble and able for so much typing?
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Ha! What a good idea. No, I don’t. But I do see the typing itself as practice, for…more typing. I have days when I’m more accurate, and then days when I am less so – I find that very frustrating, because if you’re being held up by the physical speed with which you can get the words onto the screen, it feels like wasted time.
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7. If someone knocks at my front door and I don’t hear them, then did they ever really knock and, for that matter, if I leave the room doesn’t everybody just vanish? Answer in THREE words.
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Who can say?
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8. List: the book you’re currently reading, your most used social media platform, your favorite hashtag on Twitter, and your go to chocolate bar.
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At the moment, I am re-reading The Magic Mountain (see above!). Twitter. #Idontreallylikeusinghashtags. And there’s a wonderful gluten-free dark chocolate bar you can get in Waitrose, but I don’t know the name – I am just triggered by its packaging in a Pavlovian way.
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9. Do you take selfies?
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Absolutely not. Unless forced to by publicists….
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10. Using the answers from question 1, 6 and 8 – write a sentence giving someone advice on how to take a selfie.
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My advice would be this; don’t do it. Why take a selfie? You only have to type up some lame caption to go with it that you’ll probably put some hideous typos in, most likely leading to the creation of Freudian slips that will then be permanently broadcast on the internet for all eternity. And the internet isn’t the real world. It’s an illusion. Then again, as Stephen Patrick Morrissey sang ‘I tried living in the real world, instead of a shell, but I was bored before I even began’ in which case, maybe you should take selfies, post them on tumblr and pretend that’s a real life. Who’s to say it isn’t?
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Many thanks, Marcus. You answers are brilliant, so funny and true. So I, being King, dub thee Crowned!
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About Marcus.
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He was born and raised in East Kent in the South-east of England. He now divides his time between a small village near Cambridge and a remote house in the French Alps.
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Marcus is the winner of many prizes, most notably the Printz Award (Midwinterblood), the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and the Blue Peter Book Award. His books have been shortlisted for over thirty other awards, including the Carnegie Medal (five times), the Edgar Allan Poe Award (twice) and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize (five times). In 2011 Revolver was awarded a Printz Honor.
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Marcus is the winner of many prizes, most notably the Printz Award (Midwinterblood), the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and the Blue Peter Book Award. His books have been shortlisted for over thirty other awards, including the Carnegie Medal (five times), the Edgar Allan Poe Award (twice) and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize (five times). In 2011 Revolver was awarded a Printz Honor.
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His latest title in the UK is The Ghosts of Heaven. US publication to follow in early 2015.
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Links
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Michelle Moloney King 