Sylvain Neuvel's Europe ) made quite an impression on me when I read it a few weeks back.Here's the blurb:And with the sequel, Europe ), coming out soon, I got in touch with the author to see if he'd like to chat with me, and voilà! Here's our interview!Enjoy!------------------------------Dad. Nerd. I love toys about as much as my son does. I dropped out of high school at 15, travelled a lot. I went back to school for a BA. Moved to Chicago, got a Ph.D. Did I mention I love toys?It starts with an eleven-year-old girl who falls through the ground and finds herself lying in the palm of a giant metal hand. Seventeen years later, she’s reunited with it as a physicist and leads a team of pilots and scientists, scouring the planet for more giant body parts. It’s a treasure hunt. It’s about humanity and our place in the universe. It’s about human nature and how we can’t escape it.Wow. This is a book I was going to self-publish. Fast-forward a couple years, I’m at Del Rey, SLEEPING GIANTS is a USA Today bestseller, finalist for Best Science Fiction on Goodreads. It’s being translated in twenty languages. Yeah, I’m happy. :)I write accessible science fiction. I like stories that are well grounded in reality. I also like my readers to think for themselves. I try to make them work, participate in the storytelling.I queried about fifty-five agents for. They all turned me down, so I decided to self-publish. I wanted a quote to put on the cover, so I sent the manuscript to Kirkus Reviews, hoping I could salvage a couple words from their review. They loved it. The day they put their review online, I got an email from a Hollywood producer, then another and another. A week later I had a movie agent at CAA, the movie rights sold to Sony. I found a literary agent in New York and we chose to go with Del Rey.I started this book as an excuse to make toys for my son. He wanted a backstory for a robot I offered to build for him. That turned something completely different, but it’s still his fault.There are so many steps to go from book to screen. There is already a script, written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, Spider-Man, etc.). Things are happening, slowly. I hope to have some news in the near future.NOTHING! Kidding. I’m really excited about. It’s darker than the first one, faster. For those looking for answers, there are some in there, some new questions as well. It begins nine years after the events of, when another giant robot shows up in the middle of London.Very much so. Writing it was a very different experience. It’s the first book I wrote someone had already bought, so I felt some pressure, but I was really happy with the result. I’m working on the third now.Nothing yet. I’m not going anywhere in the Spring. I have a launch for WAKING GODS at Indigo in Montreal on April 4th, which also coincides with the release of the French edition of SLEEPING GIANTS. I’ll let everyone know where I’m going later this year on social media.No title yet. No date either. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came about out a year after WG.I played with it a bit. I like dialogue, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick to a single point of view, switch every chapter, etc. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea for the interviewer and it all clicked. He’s not only one of the most important characters, he’s also the glue that holds everything together.I work hard. That’s pretty much it.I’m always trying to improve.was fun to write because I’d learned so much writing the first book. I’m getting better at plotting, figuring out what angle to use, what to say and what not to say. I hope I keep getting better.SPOILERS AHEAD!!! I wrote a book about a giant robot. I really went out of my way not to go the route everyone expected me to take. In many ways, I wrote an anti-Pacific Rim.The series is more or less what I intended it to be. I added one major character forwhile writing it. These books are hard to structure. It’s not so much the story as it is how to cut it, which character to use, so I need things to be pretty well set before I can write anything.I admire people who have managed to write good books year in and year out for a long time. My first reading was with Robert J. Sawyer, who’s a real hero of mine. I was so intimidated. I introduced myself by noting that we had twenty-three published novels between the two of us. They were all his, mine wasn’t out yet. As far as who and what I read, it varies wildly.I would probably take the New York Times, just because it would mean I’m reaching a wider audience. One of the things that keeps coming up in reviews for SLEEPING GIANTS is: “I don’t read sci-fi, but…”. I like that. I really like that. I’d be incredibly honored to win any award, though. Can I get both?We live in very different times than those I grew up in. When I was a kid reading Michael Crichton, it would never have occurred to me to write to him, I mean never, but that’s the way things work now, and I love it. I think it’s fantastic that people take the time to write to authors they like, and every time I have a signing at a convention, I encourage people to let me know what they think after they’ve read the book.No. Writing by committee is never a good idea.I must have done something right in another life, because I’ve had the craziest luck with covers for this series. Both the US and UK covers forare absolutely splendid, same for. Both have been on lists for best cover of the year. It really makes a difference. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. I’ll admit I judge books by their covers before I buy them.Architect or gardener, plotter or pantser. I’m definitely an architect. I usually start with two or three really strong visuals: girl in a giant hand, that sort of thing, and I plot the story around those. Then I divide it in parts, I cut those into scenes and I detail the key moments in each one. Then I start writing. I wish I could just jump into it without a safety net, but I can’t. Writing is really fun for me, but it’s still work, and work is always better if you plan ahead.I want people to find their own answers to interesting questions. That whole series is about us, what it means to be human, to be you. If I can get people to think about those themes, I’ve done my job. It’s the questions that matter. Fun too.Well, I like wine, but it’s in the question so let’s be more creative… How about we make it a Darth Vader. Rum, Apple liquor, Earl Grey Tea, Ginger. You drink it the way you want to, but a lot of people mention they’ve read SLEEPING GIANTS in one sitting.I’m making a samurai Stormtrooper costume. That’s all I have to say.