Ask the Author: Stuart Gibbs
Answered Questions (2069)
Stuart Gibbs
I had a wonderful time visiting Rwanda, Tanzania and Zanzibar to research Ape Escape.
Stuart Gibbs
I do not have a favorite book of my own in any of my series -- or overall. I spend over two years of my life working on each book. After all that, it's as good as i can make it. I couldn't possibly say that I thought one was better than all the others.
Stuart Gibbs
You are correct that I don't have a favorite book of my own, but the research for some of them has been quite fun. I have been able to go behind the scenes at museums, zoos and national monuments, as well as getting to travel to some amazing places like Indonesia and Botswana.
Stuart Gibbs
I like all my series equally. If I liked one more than the other, I would only write that series.
Stuart Gibbs
Yes, there will be more SS books after Blackout. I am not sure how many, but there will be more.
Stuart Gibbs
I think Poe was a brilliant original writer. He created the first modern mystery, which says something.
Stuart Gibbs
I honestly have no say at all in the chosen font. That was a decision of the Simon & Schuster design team back in 2009 or so.
Stuart Gibbs
There is a big difference between a ball going over a fence and a person. A human is approximately 200 times larger than a ball (and two people are 400 times larger.) If the bad guys had a laser grid over the fence, it would be triggered by something as large as a person, but not as small as a ball -- or otherwise it would go off every time a bird flew over or a squirrel ran along the fence.
Stuart Gibbs
She was not longer talking to her parents, so it's conceivable they didn't even know she had left. The university was given a fake reason for her leaving by the CIA. And as noted in the book, she is very concerned about having to ditch her friends; they certainly worried about her. There are always hundreds of things that happen to characters surrounding a book and they can't all be written into the book, because it slows down the story too much.
Stuart Gibbs
I am not sure if the CT series will continue. It takes me about twice as long to research and write a CT book as any of my others, which means that writing one has an effect on how many other books I can write. I do have an idea for a fifth, but am not sure that I will have the time to do that. I would love for the books to be turned into movies, but whether or not that happens is up to Hollywood and as of now, there has been no progress on a Charlie movie.
Stuart Gibbs
I definitely wonder about that. However, I think it's pretty obvious that the US government is not necessarily portrayed in the best light in these =books (certainly where its competence is concerned) and the Russians and Chinese in the books are never acting on behalf of their governments, but are simply bad people operating independently. There have been plenty of bad Americans in the books as well. That said, my heroes are objectively good and motivated to do the right thing, which I would argue, is the case for most US government employees I have met. They could all be making much more money elsewhere but have chosen to serve their country and its people instead.
Stuart Gibbs
Sadly, there will not.
https://stuartgibbs.com/2020/07/03/he...
https://stuartgibbs.com/2020/07/03/he...
Stuart Gibbs
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Stuart Gibbs
Before I started writing my own series, I read Harry Potter and Percy Jackson to see what worked in those series. I learned a lot from them, such as always try to end a chapter with a cliffhanger. Although I have probably learned something about writing from just about every book I have ever read.
Stuart Gibbs
The way I tell the stories has certainly changed, and much of that is a conscious decision. I don;t want to keep telling everything in the same way, so I have tried different ways to do things. Like, in Belly Up, Teddy tells the audience lots of information, but in later books, I have more of that info given to the audience through conversations or possibly action, because in retrospect, I think that's a better way to do it.
Stuart Gibbs
Honestly, I don't know. I wrote Big game over ten years ago and I'm sure I felt the scene made sense then but sometimes, it's been so long since I wrote something that I really can't remember.
Stuart Gibbs
I think a lot of readers might be surprised to learn that authors often don't have strong visual image of what our characters look like. (I thought this was just the case with me, but then discovered many other authors said the same thing.) I have a general idea of what my characters look like, but it's not like it's crystal clear. I don't ever draw the characters. (I don't really have the talent for that.) I simply imagine them.
Stuart Gibbs
Not only is this the pattern in the Spy School and FunJungle books, but it also pretty much the pattern in every mystery and spy novel ever written. If you have a problem with that, all I can say is that you might want to try other genres. I do not plan to write any books where my heroes do not succeed. There are enough bad things happening in the real world. I don't see any reason to have my fiction end on a sour note as well.
Stuart Gibbs
Not only is this the pattern in the Spy School and FunJungle books, but it also pretty much the pattern in every mystery and spy novel ever written. If you have a problem with that, all I can say is that you might want to try other genres. I do not plan to write any books where my heroes do not succeed. There are enough bad things happening in the real world. I don't see any reason to have my fiction end on a sour note as well.
Stuart Gibbs
I have a BA from the University of Pennsylvania where I studied communications, psychology and capybaras,
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