Publishing Company Blog | Robert Muchamore: 'I'm competing with PlayStation and XBox… sometimes it's going to bit racey'

Robert Muchamore is interviewed by site members Evil Mastermind and Patrick about his new Rock War series, why he's cynical about the X Factor and how a film of CHERUB really could – finally – be on the way

Rock War is quite a departure from CHERUB. Was there a eureka moment when the idea of Rock War came to you?

When you write the same thing in the same genre over a long period of time it gets harder to keep it fresh so I really wanted a new challenge. I still love writing CHERUB and I'm still carrying on with the CHERUB series but I wanted to do something different that would appeal to the same audience and the eureka moment for rock war was when I was going to book signings I was seeing loads of kids wearing Ramones and Led Zep T-shirts. It turned out they were learning guitar and being in bands was so important to them. I didn't think anyone was writing about being in bands in a particularly compelling way so I thought it would be interesting!

Is Rock War going to become a series?

Yes, Rock War is going to be a four book series. The first one introduces all these new characters and over the course the four books, one of these kids is going to become a massive star, one will go back to school and some will be something in between. I'm writing the second book now!

As an avid fan of CHERUB I was thrilled when a movie adaption was announced but there hasn't been much news on it since, can you tell us what's happening?

My running joke I've been telling for years is that the CHERUB movie has been one year away for the last six or seven years! I had an email from the film production people just a couple of weeks ago telling me they very positive it's all going to happen in the next year but I have had very similar emails before so not sure if I believe it!

Were you really a private investigator before you became a writer?

I worked for a company called Fraser and Fraser and we used to mainly trace missing heirs and the funny thing is there is now a reality TV series about the company called Heir Hunters, and I was still doing my old job when they made the pilot and did the establishing shots – so if you look closely you can see my hand turning on a light switch or opening a drawer. That's my claim to TV stardom!

Did you ever dream of working for the British Intelligence?

I suppose only in the fantasy sense that it would be an interesting job but I'm a bit of a coward so I don't like the idea of of risk taking I'm happier sitting indoors writing about spying than being one!

Were any of your books written about an event that happened to you?

Generally I make things up but I think sometimes in life things happen that are very very funny. There's a good example in Rock War. When I was about 15 I was walking in corridors in my school and a fight broke about between two kids. One kid punched the other one and the kids' eye went flying through the air. Everyone was shocked and horrified at this eye flying through the air and of course afterwards the eye hit the ground and we realised the kid had a glass eye. That was something I always wanted to work into a book and I do it in first Rock War novel.

If you could be one character you've created in your books which would it be?

James in the CHERUB books. James isn't who I was when I was 12-years-old, James is who I wanted to be when I was 12. I was always a bit of a coward, James is quite daring, I used to be quite frustrated with girls and girls never liked me, or I used to think girls didn't like me, and James seems to effortlessly get himself a girlfriend. I was a bit skinny and used to get harassed by bigger kids and James is a tough guy who thumps anyone who gives him trouble so James is created as this version of me that goes out and does all the things I would have loved to do.

How much research do you have to do for your books?

Henderson's Boys involved a lot of historical research. The big stuff is easy to get right, it's the little details that take up a huge amount of time. Say you are writing a scene and someone walks into a peasant cottage in France in 1940s, well what's the floor like? A dirt floor? A wooden floor? And then you have to start finding out about floors in 1940s France! I've kind of said I'm never writing historical books again because they are such a pain in the bum to write. Rock War and CHERUB are nothing like so arduous!

Your characters seem so alive and real do you spend a lot of time hanging around listening to teenagers speak?

When I was first writing I used to work 7am till 3pm so when I was coming home on the bus it was full of school kids, a lot of the dialogue in the first books was picked up was from those kids, minus the enormous amount of swearing which you're not allowed to put in a children's book.

Can you really remember what it's like to be a teenager?

I can remember quite a lot – the main thing is the profound awkwardness and the lack of sense of who you really are and where you stand in the world.

Your books do actually have quite a bit of bad language and you have some characters smoking. Do your editors ever say you can't do something?

Editors are fairly relaxed now because we've got to a stage where we've decided what is and isn't acceptable. I'm allowed milder swear words in my books but not really bad ones. If you write books like the ones I write you'll always going to get some negative criticism from people who feel all children's books should be about fairies and princesses and it should have a happy ending and all this kind of stuff. But I know those books aren't my competition. As far as I'm concerned I'm competing with PlayStation games, XBox, sport and whatever teenage boys are into. If books are going to appeal to teenagers there has to be realistic content and sometimes it's a little bit racey.

What did you you like reading when you were younger?

When I was 12 the books I really liked were Adrian Mole books, I don't know how well they have aged but at the time they were hilarious. One of things we've all got to thank Harry Potter for whether we like it or not is because the books proved you could make money publishing children's fiction. So there is a better range of kids books out there because publishers are much more confident. So I sound like an old fart saying kids have never had it so good, but when it comes to children's and teen fiction that's true.

Did you ever struggle in swimming like James Adams?

Yes I am completely aqua-phobic. I still can't swim – well I can swim three strokes in a state of complete panic and it's really funny I've got three nephews in Australia and my sister has a pool. So naturally by the time they were three years old they were swimming up and down the pool and the idea that an adult can't swim is so completely hilarious and alien. In Australia someone who is uncoordinated is called an Unco so I was Uncle Unco.

Do you have a favourite author?

The author who I love as an adult Truman Capote. He's embarrassingly talented and make me feel bad about the way I write sometimes. In teen fiction I love Sophie McKenzie's thriller books, they are really really good and appeal to the same audience as mine.

Are you a fan of X Factor?

I'm pretty cynical about it. I'd seen bits of it before but I only actually sat and watched a full season of the X Factor when I was researching Rock War. I'm not the kind of person who regularly turns on the X Factor and that's one of the reasons why the people in the book are quite cynical about it and I wanted that to be the idea that the actual show is a bit naff and although the series is named Rock War, the competition is not the crucial thing to the success of the band it's just the thing that brings them together and makes them friends.

Were you in a band when you were a teenager?

No I was really unmusical, I did a few recorder lessons but when I was about eight I couldn't distinguish between blowing and spitting and used to somehow spit out of this recorder and have spit running out of the end of it.