Alex Keller Books

Alex Keller lives in North London. Haywired, a Steampunk fairytale, was his first novel released in 2010. The sequel  Rewired, was released in 2011 and he is currently working on Justice - the second book in the Order of the Furnace series. In his spare time, he occasionally writes for various blog sites including the Solitary Bee and Geek Syndicate.

Q&A with Alex Keller

What inspired you to become an author?  I’ve always wanted to be an author. For as long as I remember I’ve read at least a book a week and the idea of writing my own appealing to be a great deal.

Who influences your writing? I’m a huge fan of an author called Terry Pratchett. His books are very clever and very funny, and I would love to be able to write like him.

If you couldn’t be an author, what would you be?  I would love to be a rock star (maybe that’s something for the future). 

How do you write?  I normally spend some time writing notes and making plans in notepads. Once I’m happy with at least a part of the story I start writing the first draft on a computer. Once the first draft is complete I rewrite the story until I am satisfied it works.  

Where do your ideas come from?  My ideas for the books come from all over the place. I studied Ancient History and Archaeology so some ideas come from there, but there’s no particular place I draw the ideas from. If something interests me or I like something then it’s likely to end up in a story; from musicians to places I’ve visited. 

What made you write Order of the Furnace?  I’ve been really interested in the Medieval period recently. I love the imagery of castles and knights and grand battles. However, I also like creating fantasy worlds so rather than try to set it in the real world I made a more fantastical one with weird machines in it as well. 

Also, I wanted to play around with the idea of what a “boy” and what a “girl” was. In Order of the Furnace, boys and girls are not expected to act differently just because of their gender. It was a lot of fun thinking in that way. 

What’s the next book you are writing?  I’m doing a sequel to Order of the Furnace and then I’m not sure. I’ve been playing around with some ideas for a book aimed at grown-ups so I may do that.