[juzzza]

As there are so many Ozzies on this forum, I was just wondering if any of you rate your very own Mat Reilly?

I bought Temple in an airport, finished it within two days and bought and read Ice Station, Contest, and Area 7(?) within two weeks.

I love his writing style, he intentionally reduces the amount of commas he uses to increase the reading pace. Quality, every book reads like and should be made into a movie.

:cool:

[Rocketsheep]

I've met Matthew a coupla times and I think he's a great guy. He gets harrassed because of his gung-ho approach to writing. His writing style's not perfect (he never claimed to be some great literary master) but if you let that drop, or are lucky enough to be oblivious to it like most readers are, his plots are wild, fast and fun. There is definately a market for it.

Temple was my favourite, I read it in 5 hours.

[juzzza]

I must admit it wasn't until after I had read Temple that I checked out his Website and he DID NOT look how I expected.

One thing I really like considering the bad press associated with self publishing or vanity publishing, is that he published Contest himself when no publisher would touch it, now look at him!!!:D :cool:

[Rocketsheep]

Not only did he publish it himself... he taught a printer how to do a glossy cover in the style of Crighton's books complete with publisher's logo (one of the monsters from Contest) on the spine then put his own address and contact number as that of the publisher. He also once pretended to be a girl and wrote an article for Cleo magazine so he contacted them and got them to read the manuscript and review it so he had a review blurb for the back!

Having borrowed the money to print it from a friend's dad, he then got up off his wee bottom and traipsed the streets of Sydney getting shop owners to take copies, once that was done, he traipsed back again and got the shop owners to put it in the window, put it beside Crighton...

He was cheeky as hell but it all paid off when an editor picked it up, read it, liked it and called the publisher in the front of the book to see if she could contact Matt about upcoming work!

Er... I'm not a Matt stalker honest, I've just heard the story a couple of times!

[juzzza]

Fair Play!!!

And thanks for that, do you know this much about all authors???

[Rocketsheep]

No... just a few. It helps if you have a nice little chat with them. It really is a small world.

[juzzza]

Who else have you had chats with?

[Rocketsheep]

Ah now... that would be showing off!

Mostly they are Australians not in SF, since I write comedy and children's stories as well so I have a wide interest in writers... except for a couple of SF writers you probably haven't heard of since they've done only maybe 15-20 short or YA novels (it takes a lot to be a famous writer that way)... oh er... but perhaps you've heard of Celia Dart-Thornton...

[juzzza]

Do you mean Cecilia Dart-Thornton?

[Rocketsheep]

Yeah, it always sounds like a stutter to me or a really bad song...

Now SHE is a born wordsmith... she could no more stop writing than you could stop breathing.