27 August 2010

Introducing... Gordon Reece,

who has a lifelong obsession with comics, and one day hopes to write THE Batman movie script - really dark, not Tim Burton dark (which is pink) or Chris Nolan dark (which is blue), but Gordon Reece dark, which is black, black, black.*

In the meantime, here is one of his weird and wonderful characters, Red Skull, uttering a terrible curse.



However, it is neither his comics nor his movie script that we are here to lavish praise upon today. It is his thrilling, electrifying, nail-biting novel Mice. Mice is creating a ruckus all across the globe, with countries snapping it up for their very own editions of Souris, Mäuse, 老鼠, Ratones, Ratos, мыши and Muizen.**

Is it the suspense? The isolated setting? The ferocity of the mother's love? The moral quandary? Or...the blood? Readers have been trapped in their bed or on their tram [scroll down to the first review] against their will, finding themselves turning page after page because THEY ABSOLUTELY MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS.

Gordon wrote Mice a long time ago, then placed it carefully in his sock drawer and lived in Spain near the sea and became a writer and illustrator of many books for children.

A series of coincidences, including a move to north-eastern Victoria where cows outnumber humans one-hundred-to-one, led him to present the MS to Our Fearless Leader almost a decade later.

Then he panicked and tried to find a way to break into the House of Onion to retrieve it before she could read it and have him arrested. Happily, he failed***, and Our Fearless Leader got to read the MS, which by its compulsive page-turning nature caused her to miss the 2009 Australian Open final, and the rest is history: Mice will hit the shelves in approximately three days.

Oh, the bus stops that will slide by unnoticed, the rendezvous that will be missed...





* He is actually quite the cheery fellow in real life - though he won't allow garlic anywhere near him. Curiouser and curiouser...
** Is it just us, or do these foreign language titles sound uncannily like Santa's new team of reindeer?
*** WARNING: The House of Onion has EYES and EARS even on weekends, and that kitchen window has a nasty drop.

2 comments:

Jonathan Walker said...

Sounds like my kind of guy! Below Tim Burton Batman and Christopher Nolan Batman is David Lynch Batman, a movie that will never be made, but that I sometimes like to imagine ..

gordon said...

A David Lynch batman - now that would be interesting. I'm thinking something along the lines of the movie 'Seven' - no bat gizmos, bat cars and bat bikes etc, no (embarrassing) boy wonder, no (irritating and embarrassing) Alfred - just Batman as detective, a caped Sherlock Holmes, in pursuit of a killer. Fog bound London would be a good setting or Venice would be interesting too. I'm just waiting for the call from DC but the phone never seems to ring. Maybe it's not put back correctly. I'll just go and check.....
gordon