When I started writing the Phoebe Leda books I firstly took inspiration from the classic genre’s of superheros that can be found in the many animated comics throughout Asia and North America.
Other less recent classics such as Sherlock Holmes the Brothers Grimm fairytales, Lord of the Rings and rather recently the Harry Potter novels were all read furiously by me. With these in mind I then twisted their influence with the hi octane feel of the Matrix, Six Million Dollar Man, which was very influential in my childhood, Flash Gordon, Star Wars and Start Trek, and to finish off with Dr Who. How could you go past this brilliant series that I grew up on and cherished for sparking my imagination to life as a child.
Even the T.V show the “Hills” gets a look in, so as to generate a modern day city feel about what the current modern young girl is doing and thinking.
Anne of Green Gables, Little Women are also prominent books as well as poems such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”. I wanted a Pollyanna type feel running through the pages, but on the flip side of that coin I wanted a mix of tension grief and emotional turmoil, a real sense of reality. I wanted to delve into teen anxieties and depression and what they have to do in overcoming these obstacles. I wanted my girl characters to be out going, challenged, flexible with their talents, modern but still holding old fashion virtues. They were to be independent but needed the strong foundations of family as a core ingredient. They didn’t need to be feminists, just equals, boys and girls just equal in standing. Fashion rules, fashion, fashion and more fashion is found in the books. Girls love fashion, they love buying and they love showing off fashion, so who am I to argue, or should I say hide away from the fact, that they don’t.
I can’t go past Australia when writing about these influences. It has made a huge contribution in growing the Phoebe Leda into a larger than life spectacle, especially Tasmania. When I was young and hitchhiking around this great country, the expanse of the continent was electrifying to me. What if unseen things could be sitting right under our noses without us knowing, it was a big place for keen young eyes to observe these outback wonders. The Nullarbor Plain affected me greatly; it blew my mind away to see nature displaying great vastness. What if? What if? This ran through my mind on many occasions, and so my story telling brain started from there.
Science was an important fixture in the story. Genetic engineering and its ramifications on us all had to be talked about. No good skirting around far from delicate topics that our children want to talk about anyway. Politics comes in later in the series with sex and other enlightening issues to frighten parents, its not all bad so hold out from getting the box of matches out to burn the book when you see it.
Just some quick points to end with, one is I wanted a smorgasbord of characters. This was important, it made the series dynamic and ever changing, nothing like a kitchen with a cupboard full of ingredients. Next is that I’m not going to shy away from making the books long. I think lengthy reads are good read, this is a personal opinion, nothing more.
I’m not a writer as such that I’m more of a builder of a very tall story. The books were never suppose to be published until I had finished them all, in five years time but I revaluated this after deciding to take Phoebe Leda further than I’d like to say here; I don’t want to spoil the story line.
The first book is quiet a story in the fact that it turned out to be the first three books in the end. After I penned more than a thousand pages it was time to consider the option of breaking the book up and so I did. This was done simply because the stories were already plotted and done, so there was no changes needed.
To end I’d like to say Phoebe is Australia’s new protagonist in the realm of the science fiction fantasy; a girl holding within her a calm and resolute personality who sports a fragile yet strong mind when push comes to shove. She loves tennis, enjoys a good horse ride with her best friend and to end she loves her mobile.
Cheers Matt
