The Official Matthew Reilly Homepage

Hi everyone,

Back again, but now it's only one week till the release of Seven Ancient Wonders! I'm absolutely thrilled with this book, so it's very exciting. It is like nothing you will have read before - kind of like Indiana Jones meets the Scarecrow. It's the first book I have read that has complex booby traps in it!

So, to what's been on my mind and my desk...

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING: "FIREFLY" (TV SHOW) AND SERENITY (MOVIE)... A RANT IN PRAISE OF JOSS WHEDON

Okay, do you want to watch something good ? Something really good?

Then go out and buy the DVD box set of Joss Whedon's TV series "Firefly", cruelly cancelled after only 11 episodes, despite its awesomeness. Then, just head to the cinema because now, the characters of "Firefly" have found new life in theatres in the film Serenity (it's the name of central spaceship in the story, a Firefly-class transport vessel).

As those of you who read my interview in the back of Area 7 , I'm a huge fan of Joss Whedon - in that interview, I put him in the same bracket as Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg (he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel , and wrote the screenplays for Speed, Toy Story and Alien Resurrection ). He's that good.

Both "Firefly" and Serenity (in the entertainment biz, they put TV shows in "Quotation Marks" while feature films are written in Italics ) have many elements similar to my own work: themes of loyalty and friendship, cool action, and nice characters get killed off in horrible ways! My action is bigger, but he's a lot wittier than I am, his dialogue is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

A warning though: Serenity isn't as big in scale as, say, Armageddon , since it was made on a modest budget - so don't go expecting the full epic scale of Star Wars . On that note, I took exception to Variety 's review of Serenity , in which the reviewer (using all the tragic try-hard jargon of Variety : e.g. words like "bow" instead of "debut"; God...enough already) questioned its big-screen credentials, saying it was still a bit too "TV" in its style. Rubbish. If you want a story that is interesting, dialogue that is funny and characters that you actually care about after leaving the cinema, go and see Serenity . Watch and enjoy.

Nice work, Mr Whedon.

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO:

1. SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS IS OUT THIS WEEK (IN AUSTRALIA)!

While I love being published around the world, it's always pleasing to see my books get released in my home country of Australia first. My nearest and dearest fanbase is right here in Australia , and it's great that in this globalised world (where, let's face it, stuff usually comes out in the America first) Australia can lead the way and get first bite of the cherry.

And this is very much the book for it - as Australia features prominently!

I am often asked by fans, "Why don't you write about Australia ?" or "Why do you have American heroes in your books?" The answer is simple: it has to suit the story. For example, Ice Station needed to have American heroes, as that story was ultimately about Britain and France trying to usurp America 's position as the mightiest military power in the world. It wouldn't have worked to have had Australia sending in a crack team of SAS troops to Wilkes Ice Station.

But now, with Seven Ancient Wonders , the story is right, and the time is right. Australia figures big-time, and it's time to take Australia to the world!!!

2. SEVEN "ANCIENT" WONDERS OR SEVEN "DEADLY" WONDERS?

Just to avoid any confusion, Seven Ancient Wonders will be known as 7 Deadly Wonders when it is released in the US in December.

Throughout the rest of the world, it will be called Seven Ancient Wonders . So don't worry if you hear about one title and not the other: they are the same book! Trust me!

Here are the Australian, the UK and the US covers respectively:

3. SOME MORE PHOTOS FROM THE CONTEST MOVIE...

Well, Hell Island has had its run (in Australia only - so apologies to my international fans! I have received many of your emails, and can only apologise - it was a special release, paid for by the Australian Government; I imagine the story will be released in the future as part of an anthology of my short stories. That said, you can get copies on Ebay...)

The initiative went supremely well, with over 250,000 copies of Hell Island given out for free across Australia ...in 30 days! That's over 8,000 copies a day . Early on, copies were selling on Ebay for $50, as international fans raced to get them. Now, you can get them a little more cheaply, but then, considering it was a free book, sellers can only make a profit!)

And the feedback I received from readers was awesome - they loved the book. Many were surprised that I had committed such a "big" story to a free giveaway. They thought I might just do a throwaway story, so as not to waste a good one - but my thinking was the opposite: this was a rare chance to show "non-Matthew-Reilly-readers" just what I do, so I threw everything at it, including several hundred computer-chip-enhanced killer apes!

4. A CONTEST MOVIE POSTER...

Okay, you've seen the "making of" photos. And last time, I put up some stills from the Contest pilot.

Wanna see the poster?

For my birthday this year, my good friend, John Schrooten secretly got this poster (which I adapted from a DVD cover design by Gavin Tyrrell) made up into a full-size print. Then he bought an old video-store lightbox on Ebay and gave it to me. It now hangs proudly in our living room, glowing from its lightbox!

Well, that's it for today. By week's end, Seven Ancient Wonders will be in stores. In the end, when all is said and done, and the movies and free novellas are gone, this is what I do: write big friggin' action adventure novels . And that's what Seven Ancient Wonders is. I truly hope you like it.

Take care,

PS: Hey Joss. Wanna collaborate ? Where once there was Spielberg and Lucas, now there could be a new force: Whedon and Reilly...