Skulduggery Pleasant #3: The Faceless Ones

Derek Landy interviewed by Amelia Vahtrick, who is the 6 - 12 Buzz writer. Click here to see all of Booktopia's Newsletters.

Do you believe in any paranormal stuff? Ghosts ghouls or magic?

I tend to be a complete sceptic when it comes to things like that. I demand evidence for practically everything. For instance, I refused to believe in the existence of gravity until I was shown proof that it was actually real- but even now I’m not quite convinced…

Have you read any of Raymond Chandler's mystery novels? Skulduggery strikes me as being rather like a skeleton Philip Marlowe.

I read a lot of crime fiction, that tends to be my favourite genre, and when I was a kid I watched all those old black and white detective movies, like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon. If it had a private eye in a cool hat who talks really fast, I loved it. Skulduggery is definitely influenced by those kinds of stories and characters.

Can you give us any news about the rumoured Skulduggery film in the works?

I wish I could...! Warner Brothers are enthusiastic, but there are no guarantees it will ever get made. We have an excellent screenwriter who has taken over the script, so hopefully we’ll end up with something that everyone likes.

Was it easy making the transition from script writing to writing novels?

Well, writing a script is completely different from writing a book, and when I had the idea for Skulduggery, I’d never written a book before. All of my ideas were automatically for movies. But with Skulduggery, it was different. I knew this wasn’t an idea for a screenplay- this was an actual book, which meant a LOT more work! I just started writing, really. Because I didn’t know exactly how to write a book, I decided to pack every chapter with the best jokes, the best action, the best horror, the best EVERYTHING I could think of- and then when it came to do the next chapter, I’d pack THAT full of the best stuff! I was determined to have fun, because I think if a writer has fun, a reader has fun.

Do you have any input into your book covers?

I have to say - I think the cover (along with the tagline) for book one is one of the best I've ever seen. The covers are by a guy called Tom Percival, and Tom will read the book, and we’ll talk about what image might be best. Then he’ll send me a sketch, and we’ll talk about what’s cool or what needs to be changed, and he’ll come back with another sketch, and he’ll usually have it nailed by that stage. I love the covers for these books- I have a few of them framed on my wall.

The snappy dialogue in the Skulduggery books is amazing! Do you think your background in screen writing contributed to this?

I think so, definitely. I started off writing screenplays, so that’s how I taught myself to write. Dialogue has always been hugely important to me, and is by far my favourite aspect of doing what I do.

What were your favourite books as a kid?

My favourite series of books would probably be The Three Investigators- books about three boys who solved crime! I devoured those books!

Why did you make Stephanie a girl? I love strong female characters in books of course, but it seems the (perhaps cliche) more obvious option would have been a boy. Skulduggery is unique in that it has a female main character and is so widely read by a male audience.

Stephanie/Valkyrie is actually based on a friend of mine. For some reason, Skulduggery’s partner was always going to be a girl, from the moment I thought of him. It took me a full five seconds to think about what kind of person she should be, and who I should model her after. I chose my friend because she is everything that I admire, all wrapped up in one person. She truly is the real, living and breathing Valkyrie.

Book Description

If you've read the previous Skulduggery books then you know what the Faceless Ones are - and if you know what the Faceless Ones are, then you can probably take a wild guess that things in this book are going to get AWFULLY sticky for our skeletal hero and his young sidekick.

If you haven't read the previous Skulduggery books then what are you doing reading this? Go and read them right now, so that you know what all that stuff in the previous paragraph was about.

Done? Good. So now you're on tenterhooks too, desperately awaiting the answers to all your questions, and instead you're going to have to wait till April to get hold of the book. Sorry about that.