Background
I was born in Swan Hill, Victoria. I spent my childhood in country Victoria and Melbourne before moving to Geelong at the age of 10. I lived in Geelong until I went to university in Melbourne after secondary school.

I currently live in Melbourne with my wife Wendy and my two daughters Celeste and Ruby. I've worked as a drainer's labourer, a truck driver, a bathroom accessories salesperson, an Internet consultant, an Electronic Publisher, in a scrap metal yard and as a secondary school teacher. Whew.

I've taught English, Literature, Drama, Legal Studies and Computer Studies.

Over forty of my short stories have appeared in Australia and overseas in publications such as Overland and the New South Wales School Magazine. My writing moves from literary fiction to genre Science Fiction to slapstick humour, depending on my mood.

I've been shortlisted three times for the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction, and has also been nominated for a Ditmar award. My short stories have twice been featured in Gardner Dozois' 'Highly Recommended' lists in The Year's Best Science Fiction and The Year's Best Fantasy. Two of my books have been CBC Notable Books. I've also twice won the Best and Fairest Award at West Brunswick Amateur Football Club.

Questions
Why is Science Fiction/Fantasy good for young people? Because it exercises the imagination. By reading about and participating in the alternative and the possible, readers are actively extending their thinking, their imagination. In a society where creative and lateral thinking are valued, reading SF and Fantasy is a real work out for the mind.

Also, thinking about the future is an important way of preparing yourself for it. The future is a constant concern for young people (What's it going to be like? What am I going to be?) and by exploring the possibilities of the future through fiction, young people are learning to be prepared. Imagining oneself in different scenarios and situations can help flexible thinking and adaptability. And Science Fiction/Fantasy are fun.

Funny incidents while writing? Hmm... When I write an action sequence, I think it's important to get the physical details right - to help the reader feel what the characters are experiencing. So when there's a fight, I often get up from the keyboard and act it out - "his head snapped back and he fell onto his right shoulder", throwing myself around the room to get the details right. Same goes for facial expressions. I'm often scowling, grimacing, grinning, chuckling, yawning, gaping while I'm writing. All of this must make for an unusual display for any flies on the wall...

Why do I write? Because it's fun. Because I like creating something that I'm in control of. Because it's like being an explorer in an unknown country, finding my way through the dense undergrowth of plot and the uncharted wildernesses of character. Because I always figured that I could do what those writers I read did. Because I get to meet other writers. Because of the thrill I get when I see my name on the cover. Because of the thrill I get when someone says, "I liked your book". Because there are important things to say. Because reading's important. Because I want reading to be seen as a viable alternative form of recreation. Because it's an urge to tell a story. Because it's part of a long, long tradition going back to the dawn of time and I felt its call. Because Hodder are such nice people to work with.

Interview with Michael Pryor

This interview appeared in Issue 23 of Aurealis, the Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine (June 1999). The interviewer was Dr Van Ikin, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Western Australia.

You're a writer who loves vivid action, aren't you? Look at the opening line of The Book of Plans - the second book of your current Doorways trilogy: "Saul Harding ducked but couldn't avoid the fist." It's a great opening line, shoving the reader straight into the thick of things...

I love vivid action, and I see is as vital to the narrative beat of my writing. I think young people, teenagers, really respond to narrative, and action is integral to this. Wanting to find out 'what happens next' is part of encouraging reading. Kids feel cheated by a book when, as they put it, 'nothing happens'. I think they're looking for a Story, in the grand tradition of stories, and sometimes I feel that too much modern literature neglects this, and I think that genre fiction is the home of narrative.

Yes indeed; you won't find me disagreeing with that!
To what extent do you have to work at the action orientation? Do you find that you write a scene and think it's okay, but then realize the next day that it needs rewriting to make it much more physical and vivid?
In short, can you tell us how you craft the kind of physical action scenes that occur in the Doorways series?

I try to concentrate on the physical nature of action scenes. By this I mean the movements and sensations felt by the characters. So this means that I often rehearse a scene, trying out stances, grips, falls, tumbles, facial expressions...
Some writers say they sweat over their writing. Sometimes I bruise over my writing.

I don't want to give readers the impression that your writing is action-oriented to the detriment of characterization, for that's not the case. The Doorways series is your most extreme venture into fast-paced action, but even there you have a strong concern for character, with a host of figures - Saul, Aidan, Nico, Garlon, Stefan, and the Princess - all established with their own personalities and viewpoints and peculiarities. And in a book like The Mask of Caliban or Talent the character-building is more intense because the focus falls more narrowly on fewer individuals.

The Doorways series is quite deliberately a romp, running at a breathless helter skelter pace. That sort of thing is fun, but there's more to it than that. I think that action is an under-utilised form of character definition. As I see it, a writer can define and explore character in a number of ways. The most common ways in the modern novel is character definition through introspection/reflection and through interaction with other characters, mostly through dialogue. I think that characters can be defined and explored through action, through events, and that's what I'm working towards. The way people behave in times of stress and crisis tells us a great deal about what sort of person they are, which is what I'm trying to do in the Doorways series and Talent, especially.

Again, this is something that I agree with very strongly. And I might add that I fear that academics must carry a great deal of the blame for shifting the focus too much toward the introspection/reflection model. (But I won't get started on that hobby-horse...)

Another feature of your work is a factor that I would call 'displacement'. By this I mean that your protagonists are usually wrenched out of their familiar lives by the circumstances which underlie the action of each novel. The blurb for Talent expresses this ultra-concisely - "Kate Sampson arrives home to find her parents have been murdered by security forces, her house destroyed and her brother is missing". In The Mask of Caliban the street-thief hero finds that his encounter with Artificial Intelligence has drawn him in much deeper than he thought, possibly to the point where he's way out of his depth. And the central premise of Doorways is that a crowd of resistance-fighters from another universe have just burst out of Saul Harding's father's backyard toolshed. Is anything in particular drawing you to this scenario?

Ordinary people coping with extraordinary situations. I like that, and I think it's a useful way of exploring who and what we are. I value adaptability, perseverance, determination, and I think they're important skills; I want my characters either to demonstrate these or learn them.

Teenagers spend their lives coming to grips with their world, and in some small way fiction can help by showing how others manage this. Nothing's too easy in my books. Saul Harding, in the Doorways series, doubts himself, lacks confidence, is awkward, but learns to deal with these things, and grows as an individual - with plenty of hard knocks along the way.

Yes, in the end he succeeds, but I have no truck with the "reality bites" school of Young Adult writing, where every effort is doomed, every relationship goes sour, every step is a downwards one. That's not reality. That's one small part of reality, masquerading as an absolute truth. There is success in life, there is triumph, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

I really want to get you to talk about the creatures you've created for the Doorways trilogy. In the first two books alone you've come up with an astonishing array of assorted beasties and critters for your wanderers to encounter. Now, you can't tell me that you don't enjoy dreaming up these critters, because the enthusiasm shines from the page - but at the same time I'd imagine it's also hard work, for these creatures would have to be designed, wouldn't they?
You don't in fact "just make them up as you go along"...

The critter count is quite high in the Doorways series, and that's partly because it's a lot of fun designing the assorted beasties and bogies that our heroes have to face. But it's also part of the structure of the series, where we have otherworldly incursions into our normal world - and what better way to emphasise that than to have distinctly exotic threats rearing their decidedly ugly heads. "It's life Jim, but not as we know it."

I accept that it's silly asking an author where he gets his ideas. But I don't think it's silly to ask about the process of transforming a raw bright-spark of an idea into a workable form - so can I ask you to talk about this aspect of writing? Actually, I'd like to ask you specifically about how you created the creature called the Hunter, which is one of the first nasties encountered in The Book of Plans?

It's one of those classic writer type things, I suppose. I tend to pick up little bits of information from all over the place - reading, TV, Internet. I remember these factoids and they tumble around in my head until they're useful. In imagining the Hunter creature, I did want something threatening, but not in any standard bogie way. So instead of the traditional fangs, tusks, hideous visages, I went for the other extreme - a featureless head. I think this sort of alien physiognomy can be more unsettling that an obviously bestial one. But that left me with a problem - what other sort of distinguishing feature could it have? I decided that it would have a weird metabolism, one that would help it hunt and kill. I remembered how reptiles and such are sluggish in cool conditions, but become more lively as they warm up, and I extrapolated it somewhat. What if the creature's metabolism worked at such a high level that it actually generated heat? That's where the details of its steaming came in, as a form of heat dump analogous to our sweating, but on a different plane.

An integral aspect of the Hunter is the way it moves. Although it's a wolf-like creature - and definitely animal-like rather than, say, blob-like - it SURGES when it moves. And it's this totally unexpected aspect which, for me, made it so formidable and fascinating a creature...

Speed can be scary, especially in a predator. Think of the speed of a snake's attack, or a cheetah, or a swooping peregrine. It's impressive and panic-inducing. When something is moving FAST towards you, you quickly realise you're in a sticky situation. It's a bit humbling, really, encountering a creature that can do something in such a superior way.

And I liked the word "surged". I groped for that word for a while before it came, and once it did it fitted perfectly. The creature couldn't sustain that speed forever, but when required it could move in such a way. Then its motion becomes almost elemental rather than animal - surged like a tsunami rather than ran like a wolf.

Can you tell us in what ways you research your fiction? In particular, for your Young Adult writings, how do you keep in tune with youth culture?

I research in the usual ways - the library, Internet, standard reference works, as well as using knowledgable friends. My wife Wendy is a web site guru and she's invaluable, and when I needed some information about specific names for building terms, I was able to ask a friend who's an architect.

As for youth culture, I've been a secondary school teacher for 18 years (currently in transition to another career...) and simply talking to and listening to young people, I've found that to be an enormous help. I find this especially in dialogue. I don't mean slang, either, but it's more the rhythm of speech. I find young people tend to speak in quite short sentences, often unfinished, but with a sort of verbal volleying backwards and forwards between each other.

All in all with youth culture, it's remarkable how much changes and how quickly, but also how much stays the same. Kids are still worried about who they are, what they're going to be, what other people think of them, stuff like that.

There is, I think, a danger in being too contemporary in culture references. Writing like that dates quickly.

I'm also wondering about the behind-the-scenes work involved in putting together something like the Flinders Street Station segment in Chapter Three of The Book of Plans. I don't think I've read such a lively-but-authentic account of urban Australia doing its thing since the famous MacDonald's scene in Lee Harding's Displaced Person. So tell me: did you make it all up, or did you observe the site for hours, notebook in hand?

I've known that part of the city for decades now, and I've moved through it so often that it's familiar territory, despite the changes. I was able to write much of that scene from memory, but I found that after I did I went back and checked the locale to make sure I had it right. I had to fiddle a little bit, but the rush, the bulk of the description just came from osmosis. It's a busy place, and a very human place, in the urban way that really is characteristic of modern Australian life.

But do you sometimes find a need to go "on location" or "do fieldwork" to get a scene right? Or do you usefully find that imagination plus a library or the Internet will be enough?

I find I'm usually using locales that I'm familiar with, drawing on places that I've visited, or been in and found interesting. At times, I have to revisit locations to make sure my memory is straight, and to taste the flavour of the place again. I did this with the Anglesea scenes in House of Many Rooms, just checking some details. I have actually gone around some locations specifically with the idea of using them in my writing. This more deliberate sort of research is lying waiting and will emerge in a future piece, yet to be decided!

So far we've concentrated on your Young Adult work, but you also write fiction for an adult audience as well. Which came first?

My first published story was for upper primary age kids. The second was a story for adults, and ever since I've gone backwards and forwards between the two areas. The bulk of my thirty odd short stories have been published for kids, and all my novels have been Young Adults. But the writing for adults is still important to me.

About four or five years ago I had the distinct impression I was spreading myself too thin. I was then, and still am, very much a part-time writer, and I made the decision that if I was really going to have a bash at this writing caper, I had to concentrate on one audience or another. It was a tough decision, but in some ways a calculated one. I decided that there were more publishing opportunities for teenage fiction than for adult Science Fiction in Australia.

Do you have a preference for either adult or young adult work?

Preference? Not really. At the moment I'm having some success with the Young Adult writing, and that's great, but I do like writing for adults as well.

And, to tell the truth, some of the writing I'm doing for the Young Adult market, if it were packaged differently could be adult stuff. I don't consciously "write down" for teenagers - they're more savvy than that. For instance, I think some of the bleakness in Talent is quite typical of some of my adult Science Fiction stories like Softly They Go Feral in the Night, and Mask of Caliban has the sort of near future society collapse that makes it the stuff of adult Science Fiction. When it comes to my humorous writing, it could be a bit different.

Something like Home Free (in The Patternmaker) is perhaps quite broad, but then again some of my stories like Long Live the King mightn't exactly be called subtle...

Yes, I suspect that one of the big hurdles facing the 90s "boom" in Aussie Science Fiction/Fantasy publishing is the Great Divide between the adult and Young Adult categories. Lots of books have cried out for cross-category marketing: your own, those of Dirk Strasser, Dave Luckett's A Dark Winter - just to mention a few. Would you hold out any hope that we might in the near future see books published in simultaneous editions for the different markets? Has this ever been discussed in relation to your work?

The crossover hit is, I imagine, every publisher's dream. But I don't think it's very likely, really, especially in the genre fiction area. I feel that while Young Adult publishers are willing to look at Science Fiction and Fantasy with an open mind, the adult publishers have a narrower vision of what they're interested in. It's a strange phenomenon, but seems to be the case. Much Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy simply appears in the general fiction lists. They're often not put in a specific Science Fiction/Fantasy imprint. Not so in adult fiction. Unless the publisher has a specific genre imprint, they tend not to look at the area seriously.

I'd love to have my work published simultaneously for adults and kids - what writer wouldn't?

Let's go now to the question with which most interviews begin: what got you started as a writer, and what keeps you going?

As a secondary school English teacher, I spent much time telling young people how to write and what to write, and it came to me that I was asking these kids to do something that I didn't know if I could do myself. So I sat down and tried. I'd always considered that I could be a writer, but had never put myself to the test. So I sweated and groaned through writing a short story, drafted, redrafted, restarted, almost gave up, but finally finished. I sent this story to a magazine where it was accepted, published and I got a cheque. Fantastic. And I kept going, and my credibility with the kids grew. When I spoke about writing it was as a practitioner, and someone who also experienced the highs and lows of writing.

What keeps me going? I like being a writer, and I like the idea of reaching an audience, creating something that they can share. It's fun, challenging and stimulating. It's difficult, being a part time writer and writing at night after the kids have gone to bed, but I'm hooked. And I also like the idea of improving my writing with each work, trying new approaches, new themes. I like getting out there and meeting readers, doing author talks and presentations. And writing is still an area of possibility for me, new areas to explore.

Tell us a bit about the strains and balancing-acts involved in juggling your two careers. Bouts of marking, for example, must be exceptionally draining of your energy and make it hard to keep at the writing. Do you have any personal rules-of-thumb which help? I know some writers compel themselves to spend at least an hour on writing every day, come-what-may - or to produce at least a few pages of work each week, no-matter-what - and this helps them to resolve any tug-of-war between the competing halves of their lives.

I'm very much the part time writer. Not through choice, mind you, but through economic necessity... I write when I can, which is after the kids have gone to bed. And because I have limited time, I must make the most of it. I try to write a bit each night, at least an hour, sometimes more if I can manage it. It's not when I'd prefer to do it. After a long day at work it's sometimes difficult to sit down at the keyboard and get going. I'd rather work in the morning, but, again, needs be. I find that it helps if I feel as if I'm making progress through my work, so I love the Word Count facility of Word. I can hit that command and be rewarded to know that I've actually added 346 words, or 1102 words, or whatever. It helps.

At the time of putting this interview together, Book Three of the Doorways trilogy - The Unmaker - was about to appear. Can you tell us what you've been working on since then?

I'm researching and beginning a new Young Adult novel that I really can't tell you much about at this stage. Suffice it to say that my publisher and I have been talking, tossing ideas around and I have three fully outlined novels ready to go. Now it's only finding time to write them all...

May fate treat you kindly, then, and make the time available!

Dr Van Ikin
Senior Lecturer in English
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands WA 6907 Australia