GORDON ANSWERS THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS KIDS ASK

10) Were you in the gifted program when you wrote your first book in seventh grade?

Absolutely not. I was just as ungifted as Donovan Curtis. I wrote UNGIFTED and SUPERGIFTED to play around with the idea that there’s a little bit of genius inside every kid, gifted program or no.

Actually, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING AT MACDONALD HALL was kind of an accident. My English teacher was the track and field coach, and he just told us to write whatever we wanted for the rest of the year.

9) Is Centerlight Island from NOTORIOUS a real place?

No, but it’s inspired by real towns that are split by the Canada-USA border. You can actually stand with one foot in each country.

The main idea for the book was to write a classic murder-mystery about a dog. You know that one dog in every neighborhood who howls at the moon till 3 am and digs up everybody’s yard? If something nefarious happened to a dog like that, how would you even start to figure out who’s responsible, since everybody in town has a motive for wanting that dog out of the way.

8) How much money do you make?

You knew it was coming — the inevitable question. So let’s get it out of the way. I earn less than LeBron James but more than the French-fry-box unfolder at the local Drive-Thru. I’m in that gray area.

7) Have you tried all the adventure activities you write about?

I’m not a sailor, a scuba diver, or a high-altitude mountaineer, and I certainly wasn’t aboard the Titanic (exactly how old do you think I am?!)

It was in writing my adventure series that I discovered research. Before that, I’d relied heavily on experience, since I was so close in age to my characters at the beginning of my career. Research is awesome because it replaces the experiences you don’t have. The most intense – and fun – research topic I’ve ever tackled was World War II, when I was writing WAR STORIES. You can’t “wing” World War II – there’s no substitute for knowing what you’re talking about. Even today, that war still stands as the largest single event in human history.

6) Were you a slacker?

Believe it or not, I was kind of a meh student in school – not because I didn’t have the ability, but because I was lazy. (Even my first novel earned only a B-plus because of messiness!)

The first video games were just becoming popular when I was in high school – Pac-Man, Q-bert, Space Invaders. But I’m not really a gamer. The characters in SLACKER and LEVEL 13: A SLACKER NOVEL are based on my older son. He’s no slacker either, but as a teenager, he was a total video-game-addicted couch potato. Cameron Boxer is inspired by him and his gamer friends.

5) What did you want to be before you became a writer?

When I was two years old, I wanted to be a dog when I grew up. I don’t actually remember this, but my parents tell me that I used to eat dinner under the table in preparation for this career. Good thing I wound up a writer. I never could have gotten into the union.

4) Which book was the hardest to write?

The MASTERMINDS trilogy focuses on kids who gradually come to discover that their entire lives are actually a twisted experiment. It’s a cool idea, but very hard to pull off, because I’m narrating from the point of view of people who don’t really understand what’s happening to them. How do I reveal information to readers if the narrators themselves haven’t figured it out yet?

Writing those books was a lot of fun – kind of like conquering a really complicated jigsaw puzzle. But telling a story from the perspective of clueless people turned out to be one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced as a writer!

3) What was it like writing the multi-author 39 CLUES series?

At first, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about sharing a series with other authors, but I love it. It’s almost like having co-workers – something most writers don’t get. It can be complicated at times, especially when you’re writing one of the later books in a series. You have to be really careful that your details match the storyline that’s happened so far.

I actually think the multi-author style brings out the best in us as writers. We all try to outdo each other, and that creates a series that’s heart-stoppingly exciting from start to finish.

2) Why are there animals on so many of your book covers?

Covers are tricky, since you have to find a single image to represent an entire story. So rather than trying to illustrate a single scene that might not make sense to people who haven’t read the book yet, we sometimes go with a dog, beaver, lizard, chicken, skunk, parrot, etc, that happens to appear in the story. (By the way, this works for robots too, if you’re an UNGIFTED fan.)

For example, the SWINDLE series is about a group of kids who pull off a daring robbery to steal back a million-dollar baseball card they’ve been cheated out of. The scariest part of that is Luthor – a giant trained attack dog. He was a natural for the cover, and after that, he became kind of the spokes-beast for the SWINDLE series.

PS: I never had dogs growing up, but Luthor has turned me into a total dog person. When I was writing SHOWOFF, I researched all the breeds, and even attended the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York City. I’m hooked!

1) What is the answer to all the world’s problems?

Come on, how could I know that? But since this is my top ten, I’ll take a stab at it.

Not all of my books are funny, but I do believe in the power of a good sense of humor. Although laughter may not solve anything, it sure makes the bad stuff a lot easier to take. So maybe the answer to all the world’s problems is: keep on laughing!