When did you start writing?

I first tried to write a novel when I was about fourteen. I went upstairs one Sunday afternoon to start it and gave up after half an hour, after discovering how hard it was. I started writing seriously when I was in my twenties, but it took me ten years and a huge amount of rejection before I got anything published.

What was your breakthrough?

I went on an Arvon Foundation writing course (Arvon is a charity that runs short courses for would-be writers at various centres around the country) and one of the tutors, who liked my stuff, introduced me to a literary agent (agents are the middlemen who represent writers and sell their work to publishers), who sold some television scripts I’d written and later my first novel.

Getting an agent was the key to my career. Without an agent it is very difficult to get a book published. Think of a writing career as a bit like setting off to sail single-handed from Britain to Australia. If you head off without a map or a compass or any idea how to get there, you might just be lucky and end up in Sydney. On the other hand, you might capsize and drown somewhere in the English Channel. An agent gives you the map and compass you need to get to your destination.

How and where do you write?

I have an office in the attic of my home in Sheffield. I write the first drafts of my books with a pen and a pad of ordinary lined A4 paper. But as I go along, I transfer the writing to a computer – that sort of acts like a first edit because I tweak some of the story as I type it. Then I rewrite as many times as necessary to get the book right. There’s a lot of truth in the old saying, “Good books aren’t written, they’re rewritten.”

How long does it take to write a book?

That’s difficult to say. I always have different ideas bubbling away on the back burner of my brain and they could be there for several years before I get the time or the inclination to develop them and turn them into books. But once I get going on a story, it probably takes six months for a first draft, then three or four months for my own rewrites, then a few weeks of polishing based on feedback from my editor and other people at the publishing house.

Have you written any other books?

Escape from Shadow Island, Jaws of Death and Attack at Dead Man’s Bay are my first books for children, but I’ve written thirteen books for adults. They are all thrillers, covering subjects such as cigarette smuggling in the European Union; a deadly bird flu virus that jumps species to humans; the search for the Italian war-time dictator, Mussolini’s, lost treasure, and the modern 21st century surveillance state we live in. 

Where did the idea for Max Cassidy come from?

Ideas are funny things. They rarely come if you try to force them, but then they can hit you at unexpected moments. Many of my ideas spring up while I’m doing boring, routine tasks like the washing up, or mowing the lawn.

Max is one of those characters that has probably been lurking in some hidden corner of my brain for many years. I first read about the legendary escapologist Houdini when I was at junior school and found his tricks and stunts fascinating. But it was only recently that I thought a boy escapologist would make a good hero for a series of children’s thrillers.

Is Max based on anyone in particular? 

Not really. He’s mostly invented, but he probably has bits of my own sons in him and a little bit of the kind of kid I would have liked to have been when I was his age – only I couldn’t pick locks or get out of handcuffs or swim a hundred metres underwater.

Paul Adam started his first novel – a gripping adventure story about a teenage boy – when he was fourteen years old, the same age as Max Cassidy. He went upstairs one Sunday afternoon to write the book and came back down half an hour later after he’d discovered that writing books was too much like hard work. “It still feels like hard work,” he says, only now he has no choice but to get on with it as he has a wife, two sons and a voracious tortoise named Ted to support.

He studied law at Nottingham University and then became a journalist.

During his first job, as a reporter on the Morning Telegraph, in Sheffield, he wrote a huge number of very boring stories and was on duty the night South Yorkshire police caught the Yorkshire Ripper – one of the most notorious killers in history. “I was the most junior reporter in the office,” he recalls. “The News Editor called me over to his desk and told me that the Ripper had been caught in Sheffield. This was a huge story. The Ripper had killed 13 women and escaped capture for six years. I thought, ‘YES! This is the big one!’ Then the News Editor said that every reporter was going to be working on the story – except me. Someone had to write all the other articles for the next day’s paper and that was my job. So that’s how I covered the crime story of the century.”

While working as a journalist, Paul started writing a novel in his spare time and, although the book was devastatingly brilliant, sadly no one wanted to publish it. So he wrote a second novel – even better than the first one – but no one wanted to publish that either. Or his third… or his fourth … until finally, when he was getting very old and tired, a publisher took pity on him and accepted one of his books.

He has now had thirteen novels for adults published – and suggests that they would all make excellent presents for children to give to their parents.

The Max Cassidy thrillers – Escape from Shadow Island, Jaws of Death and Attack at Dead Man’s Bay – are his first books for children, but he has written other stories for kids, including the family feature film To Catch a Yeti, which starred the world-famous rock star Meatloaf (ask your parents who he is). This was based on an idea he had when he was camping on the slopes of Annapurna in the Himalayas, and saw a massive footprint in the snow outside his tent, but not the creature that had left it. “I thought, ‘what if the reason no one has ever seen an Abominable Snowman is that, although its feet are huge, the animal itself is only twelve inches high and it uses its feet to ski down the mountains?’,”Paul says. “So the film is all about a 12-inch-high yeti with massive feet who accidentally gets taken to America in the rucksack of a climber and causes havoc.”

Paul wrote a number of stories for his own children when they were younger – short stories to read at bedtime – but as the boys got older, he really wanted to write a book that they could enjoy reading themselves.

“I remember reading a book about Houdini when I was at junior school and being fascinated by the way he could escape from handcuffs and chains and locked cabinets,” Paul says. “Then the idea came to me a few years ago of a schoolboy escapologist who gets into all sorts of dangerous situations and uses his escapology skills to get out of them. And that’s how Max Cassidy was born.”

Paul has lived in Italy and various parts of Britain, but is now back in his home town of Sheffield. He writes in the attic of his house using a biro and an A4 pad of paper. In his spare time, he enjoys music, films and sport.