Ransom Riggs

I was in the same class of 100 kids from grade 6 through 12, many of whom I still call friends.

I wanted to create characters who could do fantastic things but who weren't exactly superheros - characters who exist on sort of a spectrum from super-ability to disability.

Teenagers are extremely smart, and if they think for even a second that an author is 'writing down' to them, or mimicking their voice poorly, or condescending to them in any way, they will throw the book across the room.

I loved the 'Chronicles of Narnia.'

I love building out the worlds of my fiction with fictional books.

I fell in love with London and one particular era in London.

I loved the idea of a book of fairytales meant especially for peculiar children, and I love even more the idea of making that fictional book real.

The Tales' are an important part of 'Hollow City,' when the kids discover secrets encoded in them that end up saving their lives. I wrote two tales as part of 'Hollow City,' and spent the next couple of years finishing the trilogy but itching to write more tales.

You find a lot of junk when you're searching through lost and tossed photo ephemera, but every so often you'll find a gem, a wallet-sized masterpiece you're certain could hang on the wall of a gallery if only someone with a name had taken it. Find one or two of those and you're hooked for life.

In 'Hollow City,' I'm taking all the characters out of the lives they've been secure in for years and plunging them into the unknown. That's how you really get to know them.

Pine View was a great school for me - it made it safe to be a nerd. It was okay to really care about doing your homework and doing well in school.

Some days, I would find what seemed like entire family trees, torn from once-treasured albums and dumped in disorganized bins, selling 10 for a dollar. I wondered how people could give up pictures of their great-grandparents for complete strangers to paw through - or why complete strangers would want them.