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Where did the idea for Mortal Engines come from?

It arrived very slowly, built up over many years from scraps of real history and bits and pieces of the books and films that I enjoyed. From the late eighties onwards I was planning to write a story that would hark back to the sort of sci-fi adventures I'd liked reading as a teenager. The look and feel of the world soon fell into place, as did certain key characters like Hester and Shrike, but it wasn't until I hit on the notion of a food-chain of predatory cities that I felt I had an image strong enough to build a novel around. At that time there was a lot of concern about the expansion of towns and the building of new roads - this was the era of the Fairmile road protests - and you often heard people complaining about towns and cities 'gobbling up' the surrounding the countryside (a process which is still going on, of course). I think that's what made me start thinking about a city that really did gobble things up, and what it would be like to live there...

What are 'The Hungry City Chronicles'?

When the Mortal Engines books were first published in the United States my then U.S. publisher, Harpercollins, felt that they needed a series title, and they chose The Hungry City Chronicles. I've never liked it and I never use it, so you won't find it mentioned anywhere else on this site!

Will there be more books in the series?

I hope so. When I finished A Darkling Plain I thought the world of the Traction Era was mined out, but by skipping back to its beginning in Fever Crumb I think I've managed to open a new seam. I'm hoping to follow Fever on various adventures. The next book, A Web of Air, is set in a harbour city called Mayda, built inside an old impact crater somewhere off the coast of present-day Portugal, and haunted by mutant seagulls, would-be aëronauts, and spies and assassins of various persuasions. And if she survives all that I'm hoping to send her to places like Nuevo Maya and Australia which I never found time to explore in the first four books.

Why did you make Hester so ugly and angry?

I initially made Hester ugly just in order to distinguish her from the beautiful heroines you usually find in this sort of story. Her angriness followed naturally. I think she's a very romantic, attractive person who's stuck with a hideous face, so it seemed right that she'd be a bit tetchy. Even I was surprised by just how nasty she turned as the series progressed, but I hope she never entirely loses the reader's sympathy.

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