Seven million books later, Garth Nix still has a back-up plan

Picture this. It’s Canberra in the early 1970s. It’s lunchtime on a school day, and in the middle of the sports oval a group of kids is being led by one of their own on an adventure.The boy asks them to imagine they’re entering a pyramid in Egypt. As they explore deeper and deeper inside, he describes in detail everything they’re seeing around them.And then, all of a sudden, something emerges from a dark corner. A mummy comes to life, bursts free of its sarcophagus, and lurches toward them. The boy tells them all to run for their lives, and the kids scarper.Author Garth Nix is soon to release his first adult sci-fi novel, Massif.Steven SiewertGarth Nix, who is now 63, smiles at the memory. He was that boy.And, in reality, he hasn’t changed that much. The kid who would go on to be an early adopter of Dungeons & Dragons (“I was nearly always the dungeon master running the game, of course”) is still imagining other worlds and telling tales about them, but now he does it in the fantasy and science fiction books he writes. And his audience is no longer a small gaggle of schoolmates, but a loyal readership that has rewarded him with seven million sales of 42 books.Sitting in his spacious, light-filled office in Waverley, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Nix is gearing up for the release of what is being billed as his first adult science fiction novel, after more than three decades spent largely in the young adult and children’s books space.Massif is set in the 24th century, when the military of the future is hitching rides on giant space-exploring mountain ranges that take them to other planets and stars. But as the aims of these “massifs” come into question and wars flare up about intergalactic ownership, one of the earthlings becomes stranded in space, and things take a decidedly dark turn.“I wanted to tell a good story,” Nix says. “But I guess I had these people leaving Earth because things are so bleak, so at the back of my mind I was thinking about the current environmental situation we’re facing when I was writing about this future Earth that is a horrible mess. I mean, we’re headed in that direction.”Garth Nix, pictured early in his career, in 1995. He started writing full-time in 2002.Peter RaeIt’s not the first time Nix has echoed real-world issues in speculative fiction. His previous books have been set in fantastical or future worlds, but some have addressed contemporary hot-button topics such as the plight of refugees and blaming “the other” for the problems of the world.The main characters in Massif are soldiers. Nix has had a lifelong interest in military history, and in the acknowledgments at the back of the book he thanks the Australian Army Reserve, which he joined at the age of 17, spending five years there in the first half of the ’80s.“I ended up in an assault pioneer platoon, with a fascinating mix of people and a commander who was a Vietnam veteran,” he says. “The training was rigorous and we did exercises where I spent nights in state forests being pursued and then being stripped and interrogated. For a writer, these are all very useful experiences that I’ve been able to draw on.”He distinctly recalls the time a sergeant accidentally dropped a box of detonators off the back of a truck. “Luckily, they didn’t explode, but I still remember that flash of being petrified about what was about to happen, and not being able to do anything about it. You can use moments of fear like that in your work.”That’s not all he can use. You could say that when it comes to writing and publishing, Nix knows how the sausage is made. He has worked as a bookseller, a marketing consultant, a senior editor at HarperCollins, and an agent with Curtis Brown in the late ’90s and early 2000s.“Because I’ve worked in publishing, there’s sometimes an assumption that it’s all about connections,” Nix says. “But when I sold my first book I was working in academic publishing and knew absolutely no one in trade publishing. I did it the usual way, sending submissions to publishers, most of whom rejected it or didn’t even reply.”Of my 42 books, the first 15 were written when I had super busy day-jobs. It’s totally possible.He has some advice for aspiring writers who say they would be able to finish that novel they’ve been tinkering with if only they didn’t have a job and could devote all their time to writing.“I decided to become a full-time writer in 1998, and left my job,” says Nix. “And I then wrote absolutely nothing for the next six months. So I went back to work part-time as an agent. Of my 42 books, the first 15 were written when I had super busy day-jobs. It’s totally possible.”While he was working, Nix regularly wrote on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and on Sunday afternoons. His first book, the children’s fantasy novel Ragwitch, was published in 1990. Since then, he has been prolific, whether it’s YA science fiction (Shade’s Children; A Confusion Of Princes), sprawling fantasy series (The Old Kingdom; The Keys To The Kingdom) or collaborations (the Troubletwisters series, with Sean Williams).He’s most definitely a full-time writer now, and has been since 2002, going to the office each day from his home in Bronte, where he lives with his wife Anna McFarlane, a publisher at Allen & Unwin. He keeps what he calls “London publishing hours, about 10am to 5pm”, alternating between two workstations, one a standing desk and the other a desk with a chair.And he keeps a lot of plates spinning. Massif is published in September. He has already delivered his next book, The Even-Handed Booksellers Of Edinburgh, which is scheduled for October 2027 publication, and is the latest instalment in his “booksellers” series that started with 2020’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London. And he is currently writing a YA coming-of-age fantasy novel, “which has dwarves, elves, dragons and all that stuff”.Speaking of “all that stuff”, has he ever considered writing a book set in the contemporary, real world?“That’s a good question because I have definitely tried to write contemporary realism before. And a number of short stories I wrote started out that way, but then part-way through I decided to throw in something fantastical. It’s just what I do. It’s my natural instinct.”That’s worked out pretty well for him so far, hasn’t it?“It has, but you know, I’m actually still a minor shareholder in Curtis Brown. So that’s kept my toe in the door. For a long time, up until about 10 or 15 years ago, that was my back-up plan. I thought that if things didn’t work out as a writer, I could always go back to being an agent. I guess that’s potentially still a possibility.”The man who has published 42 books and sold 7 million copies pauses and offers a wry grin.“But, you know. Less so.”Massif by Garth Nix is published by Allen & Unwin on September 8.