Jon Mayhew

Jon Mayhew

About Author

Jon Mayhew's debut novel Mortlock was the most popular title in the 2011 Booked Up scheme. It was also shortlisted for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize and has won several regional awards. His subsequent novels The Demon Collector and The Bonehill Curse have increased Jon's fanbase and made him an author to go to for thrilling reads.

Jon Mayhew lives on the Wirral Peninsula close to the Dee marshes with his wife, four children and a menagerie of pets.

He has been a teacher for over twenty years and works with children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions.

When Jon is not writing he enjoys running and has completed seven marathons. Traditional folk music is another passion and he plays mandolin in ceilidh bands. He believes there is no film or book that cannot be improved by the addition of a shark!

Author link

www.jonmayhewbooks.com

Interview

THE EYE OF NEPTUNE

PUBLISHED BY BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN'S BOOKS

MAY 2013

In this tale of daring and adventure, a young Indian prince, Prince Dakkar, travels to England to learn how to become a ruler. When his tutor his tutor is kidnapped, Dakkar decides to give chase to the kidnappers in a newly-invented submarine. In doing so, Prince Dakkar enters a dangerous world of spies and intrigue - as well as giant creatures of the deep!


Q: What inspired you to write a story about a boy who travels under the sea?

A: I have always been fascinated by the story '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' by Jules Verne. I thought it was a brilliant story and Captain Nemo, the main character, fascinated me. He was such a flawed character and I wondered how he became the Captain Nemo since he was actually born as an Indian prince, Prince Dakkar?

I decided I would really like to write a book about the 'young Captain Nemo' and I got the go-ahead from my publisher.

The Eye of Neptune is the result. It's based in the early 1800's, just before the time of '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', but I like to think it's more fun than the original story that inspired it!

We see Captain Nemo as a boy, when he is still Prince Dakkar. When he was ten, the prince was sent to Europe by his father to learn about the English, their enemy. He hated school here and ran away several times, hence the opening line is that he hates the English!


Q: Why have you included so many gadgets in the story?

A: The back story for Captain Nemo is that he goes to Europe as a boy and returns to his country to rule, but there is an Indian Mutiny in the 1850's. After that, he goes to an island and builds a submarine to travel in.

I thought he would need to develop the skills to be able to do that while he is in Europe, so in my story I talk about inventions and include lots of gadgets.


Q: Did the gadgets you mention actually exist then?

A: The main gadget in the story is a working submarine and the idea for this is based on reality. In my story I mention Robert Fulton who developed a submarine. That person, Robert Fulton, actually existed and in the 1850's, he tried to sell a submarine to Napoleon; it wasn't very good and they turned it down so he went to the US to develop it.

In my story, the submarine had to be believable but I am delving into the realms of fantasy here. Even the submarines we have today are not ideal and you'd actually need space technology to get to the bottom of the sea in the way my characters do, so I am ignoring huge chunks of science in writing this.

I am working within the science that Jules Verne knew at the time. He was well read and a stickler for scientific detail, but people at that time also thought that the centre of the Earth could be hollow!


Q: What inspired the amazing underwater creatures in your story?

A: In Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, there are several giant creatures such as giant squid, as well as giant crabs and the Terror Birds on Mysterious Island. I really enjoyed creating my own Terror Birds in this story.

I keep chickens and if you have ever watched them searching around for things to eat you'll see they are quite fast and merciless, and I developed that into this idea of a two metre-tall chicken which, if you think about it, could wreak havoc - and does! I also create my own giant squid for this story.

The other creatures I mention either did exist or may have existed. For example, some fishermen once found a squid that was 42 feet long! I also enjoyed inventing a race of sea people called the Qualar, although there's nothing in Jules Verne's stories about them.


Q: The Eye of Neptune is the first book in the Monster Odyssey series. What happens in book two?

A: The second book is set in 1815 and starts with Dakkar and Oginski, his tutor, trying to spot Napoleon escaping from Elba Island. Oginski gets badly wounded and he and Prince Dakkar end up staying in Lyme Regis while Oginski recovers.

However, Prince Dakkar ends up in trouble again and finds himself in a chase that takes him and his friend to the centre of the Earth where another of Oginski's brothers has set up a base and is training dinosaurs ready for warfare. He plans to use the dinosaurs to take over the world. It ends up with a battle in the ocean that takes place as the Battle of Waterloo is being fought!


Q: Have you always written stories?

A: I have written since I was a teenager when I wrote short stories and terrible horror stories. Although I continued to write as an adult, I found I was writing the beginning and ending of things rather than complete scripts.

Then in 2006 I broke my ankle while training in the snow for the London Marathon and I couldn't move around so while I was sitting still, I wrote and finished a book. It was terrible, but it meant that I got the writing bug again.


Q: Would you like more children to read Jules Verne's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', which inspired your story?

A: I would love it if, having read The Eye of Neptune, children decided to watch the film '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' or to read the book by Jules Verne.

When you ask children who was Nemo, most will talk about Nemo the Clown Fish, so I hope more children will realise that before that, Nemo was the name of the main character in '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'.

I had the book when I was a child but when I did pick it up, I struggled with it because of all the detail - although I thought the stories themselves were great.


Q: Did you read a lot as a child?

A: I wasn't a very confident reader, although I could read. But when I was nine I had a teacher who wouldn't let me read anything until I had read one particular book that I hated. I refused to read it and he refused to let me read anything else until I had, so I just sat and looked at the cover of that book for months.

I stopped reading for three or four years after that and only started reading again as a teenager because a friend of mine used to go the library every Saturday so I went with him.

After a while I got so bored waiting for him that I picked up a book about a planet ruled by cats and I loved it and started reading anything sci-fi and fantasy after that.

One of the books I read at that time was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! So when I am writing books today, I am writing things that I feel would have interested my younger self at eight to 12 years - if I had been reading at that time....

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