MATTHEW REILLY
He’s Australia’s biggest-selling author, but this down-to-earth writer is just as content hanging out with his fans at a suburban shopping mall or watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
He’s a best- selling author, but this downto- earth writer is just as content hanging out with his fans at a shopping centre.
Those who sniff at selfpublishing should talk to Matthew Reilly. At age 19, he wrote his first book, Contest, and – when he couldn’t get anyone interested – self-published it in 1996. Even though Contest had been turned down, as he says, “by everyone”, he was already 50 pages into his second novel, Ice Station, when a commissioning editor at Pan Macmillan discovered Contest in a book store. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, Reilly has sold more than eight million books worldwide. In 2018, he was voted Australia’s favourite author by Booktopia, beating the likes of Bryce Courtenay, Di Morrissey and Liane Moriarty. He’s now in talks with major studios about making movies and TV series of several of his books.
A large part of his success, he says, is the loyalty and affection of his fans, who have embraced not only his thrilling, page-turning bestsellers, but his ordinary background, growing up in suburban Sydney.
“I’m not a football star or a cricketer. I think part of my appeal is I’m authentic,” says Reilly, who is a self-confessed “geek”. “I’m the kind of person who would read this book, and see Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War twice at the cinema.”
One might expect that his fans – drawn by epic sagas of action heroes who battle mighty adversaries and explore exotic locations while trying to save the world – would be mostly male.
“If you went to my book signings, you’d be surprised. It’s probably 55 to 60 per cent women. Women read more than men. They love the escapism.”
On a book tour to promote his latest novel, The Three Secret Cities, Reilly meets some of his most ardent fans at a signing at Penrith in Sydney’s west. Historically, his visits to Penrith are the biggest of every tour. “I go to Westfield Penrith shopping centre and there’s a line of people going for 500
metres down the mall. And I’m there for three hours, signing as fast as I can. That’s my fan base.”
There was a point where Reilly almost gave up writing. Back in 2011, while away on a book tour, he lost his wife Natalie, who had been battling anorexia and depression, to suicide.
“My heroes are never the smartest guys, but the ones who’ll pull on that last ounce of strength.”
“When you experience that sort of tragedy in your life, you just … I just stepped out of the way for a year. It took a year for my brain to sort of fit back into place. You just emerge from the fog again and you realise who you are. So, I sort of emerged and funnily enough, what I wrote after that was The Great Zoo Of China, possibly the most cartoonish of all of my books. I think, if you wanted to analyse what I did, you’d say it was escapism.”
We talk about the two views of heroism – there’s the expert soldier who defeats everybody really easily – then there’s the other view that heroism is basically just taking the blows of life and continuing on.
“The latter are the kind of heroes I like,” he says. They permeate my books. I like the heroes who pick themselves up one more time.”
Because that sounds like how it actually happens in real life.
“It is,” Reilly agrees. “It goes to why people seem to like me, because [my career] didn’t happen easily. If I’d gotten a book deal because a friend of mine was a published author, it’s kind of easy. There’s no struggle, and as I’ve said, my heroes are never the smartest guys in the book, but they’re the ones who’ll dig deepest and pull on that last ounce of strength.
“In life, things happen. You pick yourself up and dust yourself off. The best you can do is live a good life.”
• The Three Secret Cities ( Pan Macmillan) is out now.