The novel follows Ludwig Von Guggenstein as he attempts to stop his father, a dangerous inventor, from executing his terrible plans. The book has received lots of attention and some great reviews; Alex has since written Rewired and has plans for two more books to complete the series. I interviewed him to see if I could find out a bit more about his writing and the ideas behind it.

Why do you write books for children rather than adults?
I started wanting to write for children when I interned at a few children’s publishers a couple of years back. I’d never really considered doing so before and instead thought about writing for adults, but when I worked in the industry I saw that writing kids books could be immensely fun and I could get away with adding daft and strange things into the stories that perhaps adults wouldn’t be so interested in.  Plus I liked how kids’ books have a much broader appeal than adult books and aren’t quite as pigeon-holed for particular readers.

Do you see the future of children’s books as a digital one?
I’m really not sure. I think the digital aspect of the industry will grow but I don’t really expect it to replace hard copies of books entirely. Personally I don’t really enjoy reading fiction on electronic devices, but if others do then great. I do like the idea of including added content to digital copies like author interviews; videos; artwork; etc, which could be really interesting.

Do you have a writing routine?
Sort of, but it’s ever evolving. When I wrote Haywired I didn’t plan it at all and that was a bit of a mistake. I learned that not planning meant I wasted a lot of time writing huge amounts that ultimately didn’t work. Now I try to plan a book much more before I start writing it properly. However, I still feel like I’m learning new, better ways of writing all the time so I imagine my routine will change as I write more.

How important do you think the relationship between author and editor is?
I think the relationship is VERY important. As an author, especially a new one, it’s easy to treat your books reverentially and not see the problems in them. A good editor is vital in turning your book into something more accessible and appealing to an audience and that’s crucial in helping to make your book more successful.

The Haywired series uses the Steampunk genre, how would you describe this genre and why did you decide to use it?
Funnily enough, I don’t really think of it as a genre. I see it more as an aesthetic than anything else for fantastical fiction. I didn’t actively decide to use it when writing the series. At the beginning I wanted to write a story that was fantastical but didn’t have magic as the drive force for the weird and wonderful. I’d seen a few books, films, and games that instead used machinery and I really liked the look of it a great deal. It wasn’t until a bit later that I realised I was writing a “steampunk” book. I’m a big fan of strange technology so I guess I was simply drawn to it naturally. I like the solidity and limits of it, as opposed to magic systems that seem unclear and potentially limitless in a lot of books.

If you could live in the world of any children’s book, which would it be and why?
It would have to be Terry Pratchett’s Discworld because it’s so strange and has very decent people in it.

Do you think all children’s books were meant to be read aloud?
I don’t think all authors intend that, but I learnt that reading your books out loud (for adults or children), really improve their rhythm. In future whenever I write something I read it out aloud to check it sounds right.

The Haywired books are quite gothic, do you read gothic literature and what do you think of the current obsession with teenage vampires?
I like old gothic literature like Frankenstein and Dracula but I’m not interested in the new vampire books. I’ve not read the newer books and from what I’ve seen I don’t think they are stories I would be interested in. However, I do think it’s great that people are reading them.

What was your inspiration for Haywired?
There isn’t one source of inspiration for Haywired. It’s a combination of a huge amount of things I’m interested in. For example the world is a bit Pratchett-y as well as reflecting periods of history I find interesting. Some of the story lines and names are similar to ancient Greek myths and history; whilst Jack for example was influenced by the Joker.  I love the idea of just taking a number of disparate things I like and throwing them together.

Who is your favourite children’s illustrator?
This sounds terrible but I’ve never really paid attention to illustrators. I do find the Quentin Blake images for Roald Dahl books great though plus Abigail Larson who’s made some portraits for the Haywired characters are superb.

Have the illustrators you’ve worked with always captured the things that you imagined?
The only illustrator I’ve worked with is Abigail. I’ve very happy with how her images came out but I was quite heavily involved in making sure she captured the characters as closely as possible to what I had pictured in my head. I’d love to see other people’s interpretations of them though!

Naked are the up and coming band; contemporaries of The Sex Pistols and The Clash; friends with the likes of Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood, they are at the centre of the London punk scene.

Since his debut novel Martyn Pig (published in 2002), Kevin Brooks has been a celebrated author of teenage fiction, never shying away from the grittier aspects of adult life and often compared to the likes of Melvin Burgess due to his uncompromising realism. With Naked, Kevin Brooks gives us everything that we expect from a novel about rock ‘n’ roll rebellion but then surprises with another story, one that surfaces slowly and becomes just as important as the music, if not more so.

It is perhaps risky of Brooks to engulf his reader in a world that for the most part is unfamiliar. The 70s punk culture is not something most of his readers would have much knowledge of and could very easily be alienating, particularly when some of the characters are so thoroughly unlikeable. However Brooks has avoided any major problems by placing the narrator in the present day, allowing her to comment on her past from a modern perspective.

We become confidant to Lili Garcia, the band’s bass player whose confessional tale reads like a memoir of a time she could never quite forget. Lili takes us back to when she was 16 years old and joined Naked. Like Lili, we are at first hypnotised by Curtis Ray, the sexy and dangerous lead singer. But as the band gain notoriety, fame-hungry Curtis gets increasingly out of control and more irritating. Then, like a breath of fresh air, in walks Billy the Kid.

Throughout Naked, Brooks is careful to demonstrate that Curtis and Lili are not angry at the world; in fact politics are not even on their radar, ‘Our world was our world – our streets, our houses, our days our nights- and anything beyond that…simply didn’t concern us’. Both characters have been sent to private school and live in nice houses in middle class Hampstead. Lili has a complicated family history and a depressive mother, but she doesn’t join a punk band to shout and scream, she loves the music and what she is really looking for is adventure.

When Billy the Kid joins the band, Lili’s horizons broaden. He is enigmatic, effortlessly cool and Lili falls for him almost instantly. She discovers that he has run away from Belfast, and from the IRA who murdered his father. Captivated by his story, when she sees him sneaking around with three IRA operatives the band is pushed further from her priorities. In other words, she grows up.

To read Naked is to be sucked into the punk bubble and spat back out again, onto the dark streets of 70s England where the threat of terrorism is growing and murder is in the air. Yet this is also a book about music and passion, which is what makes it ideal teenage fiction. Brooks’s descriptions of riffs, chord changes and melodies feel more intimate than any of the characters’ sexual encounters. The novel explores the intensity with which teenagers experience music, and how it is often completely separate from any other reality. Therefore, punk is never dead, but endlessly alluring.

One of the main reasons that I love working on children’s books is that it gives me the chance to be involved with choosing the perfect image for a story, a picture which illuminates the text and brings the characters to life. But it goes back further than that. There are some illustrators who, to me, simply mean childhood. As soon as I look through some of the old and battered copies of my children’s books I am reminded of the first time I saw them, who read me the story and what I loved about it.

Shirley Hughes, Edward Ardizzone, David McKee, Jan Pienkowski, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Helen Oxenbury and countless others all have a firm place in my consciousness and I believe that they were essential to my understanding of the world and my place in it.

Shirley Hughes observes the small movements that children make with the charming  Alfie; Jan Pienkowski creates dream-like silhouettes with spectacluar backrops, evoking the most fantastical aspects of the imagination and Helen Oxenbury uses her own experience of parenthood to portray babies like no other artist. But perhaps the most recognisable and well-loved illustrator of all is the former children’s laureate Quentin Blake.

This week I went to visit the Chris Beetles Art Gallery which currently has an exhibition called ‘Quentin Blake-A Celebration’; a collection of 150 of his drawings and watercolours, some old favourites and some newer work. What makes Quentin Blake’s illustrations so classic and so endlessly appealing to children and adults alike is the warmth and humour that creeps into every drawing.

In 1975 Quentin Blake was asked to illustrate Roald Dahl’s  stories and his work quickly became synonymous with the characters that are so loved by children everywhere. He had the knack of capturing the monsters and heroes that Dahl created and conveying just how hilarious they were. Many of the paintings I saw were just as funny; the sketchy lines, and soft colours are combined with a sense of movement and energy making them above all very human. If I had the budget to cover my walls in art I know exactly what I’d buy.

While I was at Walker Books I was asked to assist with some editorial work on the latest Five Kingdoms book, which is to be published this year. I was lucky enough to meet Vivian and asked her if she would mind answering some questions about her work and her thoughts on children’s books.

Why do you write books for children rather than adults?
Erm … I’m not really sure. Maybe because children are more fun to write for? Long before I’d even thought of writing books I was writing plays for professional adults to perform to audiences of children – so maybe it was then that I decided I like to make children laugh. You get a much more immediate and genuine response from kids. I acted for adult audiences as well, and that can be SO boring.

Do you see the future of children’s books as a digital one?
I’d hope it’ll be half and half. I know I use my kindle loads, but I also buy lots of books – if anything, even more since I’ve had the kindle.

Do you have a writing routine?
Ha! I wish. No. I try to get something written every day, but it depends … some days are almost non-stop writing (impending deadline) while others are drop in, drop out days. I’d like to call them Thinking Days, but that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

How important do you think the relationship between author and editor is? Or how much impact do you think your editors have on your work?
Humph. It depends so much on what you’re writing. When I write longer novels the editor is VERY important … and I’m lucky in that I have implicit faith in my truly wonderful editor at Walker. With other books, eg early readers, it’s a more mechanical process, and the relationship doesn’t have to be so close. Picture books? An editor and a designer are involved, and that needs to be a relationship where I respect their work and judgement … almost more so where the designer is concerned. I’m picky about design and the way picture books work … NOT a nice person at all.

Most authors tend to stick to one or two age groups but you write books for such a wide range, why do think this is and do you have a preference?
No. No preference. I like moving between age ranges as it keeps me interested – I also love writing non-fiction. And I also write professional plays for adults.

If you could live in the world of any children’s book, which would it be and why?
There’s a question. Maybe the world of The Princess Bride – endless adventures, but in the end good wins out over evil, which is a comforting thought.

Why do books about magic, like The Tales from the Five Kingdoms books, remain so popular?
I suppose a number of us want to escape to another world where anything is possible. Much more interesting to have trolls wandering round than to be stuck with one’s little brother and the cold reality of washing-up.

Would you rather have the Queen’s Nose or Bernard’s Watch?
I’m so ignorant that I had to look both of these references up. I suspect I’d rather have Bernard’s Watch …

You used to be an actress, has this affected your writing?
Undoubtedly. All that dialogue! If you’ve ever been in a play (as I have) with lousy rotten dialogue then you learn to really hate it, and listen out for it with an ever wagging ear …

Do you think all children’s books were meant to be read aloud?
Some novels for older children aren’t written with that in mind, but if a book doesn’t sound good when read aloud then I’d suggest the language is not as good as it might be.

The Tales from the Five Kingdoms books are quite gothic, do you read gothic literature and what do you think of the current obsession with teenage vampires?
I read – and adored – Gothic novels at university; The Bell, The Monk, The Castle of Utranto, all of Thomas Love Peacock – but I also read (and loved) Northanger Abbey. I’d say my books are more fertilised by the endless fairy/folk tales I read as a child. Can’t say I’m a fan of teenage vampires. Give me Dracula any time. Nobody’s done it better than our Bram.

What was your inspiration for The Robe of Skulls?
A combination of Geraldine McEwan as the Duchess of Malfi and a fascination with black velvet, bats and evil.

Who is your favourite children’s illustrator? Do the illustrators you work with always capture the things that you imagined?
I couldn’t, in all truth, say I have a favourite illustrator – I know (and am lucky enough to have worked with) so many huge talents. Angela Barrett, Barbara Firth, Ross Collins, Charlotte Voake – how lucky am I??? And there are so many FANTASTIC others who have taken my stories and brought them to life. I imagine the voices and the movement, but the look belongs entirely to the illustrator – usually adding substantially to the original idea. I’d love to work with Anthony Browne one day …

David McKee, perhaps best known for Mr Benn and his colourful creation, Elmer The Patchwork Elephant, first made his living selling cartoons to papers after studying at the Plymouth College of Art and drew regularly for satirical magazine Punch as well as for Readers Digest and the Times Educational Supplement.

Since then he has  found worldwide success with Elmer, which has been published in over 20 languages and has spawned a range of merchandise which has placed Elmer cuddly toys, pencil cases and cushions in the rooms of children everywhere.

He welcomed us in to his studio flat in Kensington, which was sparse yet cosy. Elmer mugs hung in the little kitchen where he made us tea and in the living room one wall was covered in his paintings, sketches and the work of other artists he admired.

‘It’s National Poetry day so I thought I’d try and write something’. He pointed us to the notebook which lay open on a page of scrawling black ink. The poem, entitled Sweet Table was an affectionate ode to the small wooden table on which he draws and paints each day. This appreciation of the basics seemed very fitting of man who has simply said ‘no thank you’ to modern technology, who doesn’t have an email address, own a computer or a mobile phone and communicates chiefly via letters.

Looking at his warm yet uncomplicated illustrations now it all seems to make sense, yet this is not to suggest that his choice of lifestyle has made him naive. If you read the recently re-published Six Men you will find a dissatisfaction with natural human greed, which harks back to the satire he was involved in with Punch back in the 1960s. Even Elmer, the multi-coloured elephant amongst all his grey friends seems to speak of a desire for the celebration of our differences. But perhaps that’s over-thinking it a bit, after all the whole joy of McKee’s books is their wonderful simplicity.

In fact in this digital age, it is more important than ever to produce quality non-fiction which gives children a way of understanding all the information that is thrown at them. Who wants Narnia and Hogwarts when Terry Prachett’s Horrible Histories can teach you about real-life heroes and tyrants? Who wants Farthing Wood when Nicola Davies can tell you how real animals live and what makes them tick? Here are three examples of why I believe that children’s non fiction should be celebrated as essential reading:

The clue is in the title; Patrick Dillon’s The Story of Britain (published by Walker Books) will delight history lovers, but above all it will be perfect for anyone who loves a good story. Dillon focuses on a period of time through exploring the lives of the people who lived in it. P J Lynch’s detailed illustrations will have you poring over each page for hours. Dillon makes sure his book stands out from a much covered topic by delving into the more unknown events, such as the Scottish Enlightenment and the expulsion of the Jews by King Edward I. The book is highly original and a visual treat.

Dorling Kindersley’s Eyewitness Books have become something of a non-fiction classic. Their signature design is simple and eye catching with vibrant photographs, allowing the break down of facts; the perfect format for children. These books make the real world appealing in a contemporary style that becomes addictive. A great example is the Climate Change book that breaks down all the issues surrounding this topic into colourful double page spreads, making a subject daunting for most adults accessible to children.

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book (published by Walker Books) is a stunning example of how a real-life story can be used to teach children about human emotion. The former children’s laureate wrote this raw and honest picture book about his own grief and depression after losing his son. Simple phrases like ‘Who is sad? Sad is anyone. It comes along and finds you’, set a perfect tone for explaining sadness to children. The dark, shadowy illustrations by Quentin Blake are subtle and wonderful.