Sabrina Muysken
Born and raised in Sydney’s North Shore suburb of Willoughby, Matthew Reilly is proudly one of the community’s greatest success stories. Having sold over seven million copies of his novels worldwide, in over 20 languages, the gifted author is a regular on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
During his youth Reilly attended school at Milsons Point based St Aloysius’ College. He went on to study, and graduate from, Law at the University of New South Wales. It was around this time that he wrote and famously self-published his first novel, Contest.
After receiving rejections from every major Australian publishing house, Reilly used a bank loan to self-publish a mere 1000 copies of the novel, which he then sold to various bookshops throughout Sydney. Reilly’s blind faith paid off when a Pan Macmillan Commissioning Editor happened to come across the book in one of those stores, immediately recognising the budding writer’s talent.
“I knew Contest had the goods,” Mathew says.
“I just wanted to get it noticed. I knew that publishers checked out bookshops so that’s where I needed my book to be.”
Today, Reilly has authored over a dozen novels and novellas that are known for their fast pace, detailed narratives and twisting plots. Interestingly, those original self-published editions of Contest have now become much sought after collector’s items.
Reilly’s most recent release,The Four Legendary Kingdoms, is the long-awaited fourth installment to the highly popular Jack West series. For fans of the action-thrillers it has been a long seven years between drinks. After taking a much needed break from the series – Reilly wrote the first three novels back-to-back – the author is confident that the latest addition will quench readers’ thirst.
“When you get to a certain point in a series, you need to raise the stakes and lift the book to a new level. This is a story that starts right out of the gate like a bullet and it’s non-stop from there. There is no build in The Four Legendary Kingdoms. Jack wakes up on page one, captured and in a cell and off we go from there.”
If the success of Reilly’s previous books are anything to go by, the reception of The Four Legendary Kingdoms will be nothing short of widespread acclaim. And the success of the Jack West series has not gone unnoticed. ABC US Network Television has already optioned the rights for a TV series to be made based on the beloved character. Coincidentally, the producer taking on the novel’s re-imagination to fit television screens previously produced one of Reilly’s favourite films, Speed. Ironically, it is this very blockbuster’s sequel that Reilly cites when reasoning why he has left some of his stories to be stand-alone books.
“A sequel, to me, has to be better than the book before it. It has to add to it, bring us new characters… Speed is one of my favourite movies but Speed 2 in its own way tarnishes the original by being such a disappointing sequel. I think my fans know that I’m honest and keen enough to make sure that a sequel has got to do something better than the first one.”
Despite confessing to being a movie buff, Reilly admits there is truth to the idea that no screen adaptation could ever surpass an original book. At most, he believes, an adaptation can strive to be equally well put-together.
“You could literally count on one hand, I think, the movie versions which are as good as the books they were based on…There is so much more texture in a book. There is 400 pages where you can jump in and out of different characters’ heads. In a film, you are very limited by time and money. It costs big dollars to make big action scenes. But when you write a book, you can create the wildest and biggest action scenes you like and it doesn’t cost you a cent, the only limit is the limit of your imagination! To me, a book is always going to have more depth.”
When asked on where he finds the inspiration for his own stories, Reilly’s answer is surprisingly simple.
“I actually write the stories that I would want to read myself or stories that I would go and sit in the movie cinema and watch… I write to entertain.”
Matthew Reilly’s ‘The Four Legendary Kingdoms’ is available now.
