Michael Scott's series of books for young readers is being hailed as the new Harry Potter. Róisín Inglemeets the former bookseller who's had Hollywood come calling.
Spending time with Michael Scott is like sitting with a man who you suspect may have a winning lottery ticket burning a hole in his pocket. Admittedly, it was more hard graft than random good fortune that produced his book The Alchemyst, but there's growing speculation that, after 25 years as a writer, the Dubliner is in line for JK Rowling-style wealth and fame.
The evidence has been mounting since the book was published in the US in May. When we meet, his contemporary good-versus-evil fantasy set in San Francisco has just broken into the top five of the New York Timeschildren's bestseller list. New Line, the company that is making films of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materialsseries, recently signed up to produce screen versions of his books, and six instalments of the series are planned. So far, the rights to the series have been sold in 30 countries, including Croatia and Japan.
Scott is receiving up to 200 e-mails a day from children anxious to quiz him on elements of the story. Even more crucially, the publication of the final Harry Potterbook has left a massive gap in the young-adult book market, and Scott, according to whispers in the book trade, could be just the man to fill it.
Scott is a former bookseller, one-time quiz-show producer, respected folklorist and author of more than 100 books, from Irish Folk and Fairytalesto historical romances such as Seasons and The Affair, under his pen name, Anna Dillon. "My publishers didn't think readers would take romance from a man, so I use my wife's name instead." He has been around too long to be daunted by the prospect of being catapulted into lucrative Potter territory. "This is my 105th book," he says, sipping cafe latte in a Dublin hotel. "The early response to the book has been astonishing. I just might be on the verge of being an overnight success after 25 years."
If that happens, he'll have Nicholas Flamel to thank. Flamel was a 14th-century alchemist - "the originally spelling was alchymyst," says Scott - who lived in Paris, was namechecked by Rowling in the Potter adventures and appears in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. An enigmatic real-life figure, he was the inspiration for the main character in the series of books. Scott had already decided to feature Dr John Dee, another well-documented historical figure, who was a spy during the Elizabethan age, as the main protagonist. Ten years ago he decided he wanted to create "a fantasy primarily based in mythology but using only real people from history. They were the two sticks I began to beat myself with". But it was only when he got hopelessly lost in Paris seven years ago, and stumbled on Flamel's home at 51 Rue de Montmorency, now a restaurant, that he found his hero for the series.
Sitting in Flamel's well-preserved home, where the alchemist lived with his wife, Perenelle, the seeds of The Alchemystwere sown in Scott's mind.
The legend of Flamel is a writer's dream. He was said to have bought the Book of Abraham, a copper-bound tome, and spent 20 years travelling around Europe with his wife, trying to translate the strange language in the book. "The rumour was, at the time, that he succeeded and that he had discovered the two great secrets of alchemy in the Book of Abraham: how to turn base metal into gold and how to achieve immortality."
The couple returned to Paris unimaginably wealthy, funding hospitals, opening schools and donating to charity. One night after they died their tombs were raided, but the robbers found no bodies. The legend of the immortal Flamels, fuelled by Elvis-style sightings of the couple across Europe, was born.
"I began to think, what if Flamel really did discover the secret to eternal life? Where would he be today? What would he be doing? Well, of course, being a bookseller, I decided he'd be selling books in San Francisco," Scott says. The only fictional characters in the book are Josh and Sophie, twins who are charged with helping Flamel recover the Book of Abrahamand, naturally, saving the world.
Early reviews have dubbed the book a "fantasy fit to Google", and Scott couldn't be more pleased about this. The book is packed with real and mythological figures and historical events, such as the Great Fire of London. "Librarians and teachers are loving it, because it gives young people a way into mythology and to history. Readers are googling Scathach, the ancient female warrior, or Hekate, the three-faced goddess, to find out more about them. I think that's fantastic."
The action in the first book, The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, happens over two days; the six-book series will span a month. It's a complex project, but Scott relished the challenge. "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time," he says, laughing. "I've only written two of the books as yet, but the rest are tightly plotted in incredible detail. They had to be. I had to know exactly where I was going. I can tell you now what happens in chapter 25 of book six. The notes for the first book were bigger than the book itself."
He says his advance from Random House was far less than those received by children's writers such as his fellow Dubliner Derek Landy, author of Skullduggery Pleasant. "The problem with huge advances is that there is this enormous pressure to sell books. Mine seems to be selling on word of mouth rather than publicity about a massive advance, so it's selling on its own merits, which is wonderful."
Scott has already completed a book tour of the US and been schmoozed by Hollywood types, including Mark Burnett, the king of reality TV. The man who brought Survivorand The Apprenticeinto our lives snapped up the film rights to all six books. Burnett's wife is the Derry-born actress Roma Downey. "I remember walking down Malibu beach with Roma and saying how did a girl from Derry and a fella from Dublin end up here?" Scott says with the air of a writer still pinching himself.
It's safe to say Scott, who has two grown-up children, would not be in this position were it not for Harry Potter. "God be good to JK Rowling. She has revitalised this market and shown publishers that children want to read, that the children's market, far from being a niche market, is a hugely lucrative one. The thing is, it took JK Rowling two years to write a Harry Potter, and it took the young people two days to read it, so the appetite is almost insatiable."
It only remains to be seen if book-hungry children of the world bite. The Alchemystis full of Americanisms, the characters use iPods and other modern gadgets, there are references to Google Earth and one of the mythological characters can be contacted by mobile phone.
There is no doubt that Scott has created a fantastical world and a page-turner of a story, but some readers may find the book a little too knowing. A chapter at the back of the book explains how Scott came up with the idea for the series, and if you were nit-picking you could wonder whether providing so much information will capture the imagination of children in the way Rowling did. But the proof is sitting in his in box. Scott is getting those 200 e-mails a day from fired-up young readers in search of magic, mayhem and myth.
After this elephant has been polished off, Scott has more up his sleeve. "I'm planning an eco- fantasy after this one," he says. "And it's going to be set mostly in Ireland. We have a rich and amazing mythology that hasn't been fully mined yet." No better man than Scott to do the plundering.
The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott, is published by Random House, £12.99 in UK