5 Minutes With Dean Lorey

Dean Lorey is the author of the wildly successful Nightmare Academy, the first book of which has been translated into Swedish, Spanish, Greek, Czech, German, presented in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and more- and into script form for a motion picture from Universal!

The second book in the series, Monster Madness, lands September 3rd, 2008, and I was lucky enough to capture five minutes out of Dean's busy schedule between school visits, book signings, and writing- books and screenplays!


Everyone knows you as a top-knotch children's writer, but you started your career as a screenwriter! What prompted you to switch from script to prose to write the first Nightmare Academy novel?

The last show I worked on was called ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. After it got cancelled, I was looking to do something that was purely my vision. I'd thought about writing NIGHTMARE ACADEMY as a screenplay, but it was too personal of a story and I wanted to make sure that it existed exactly the way I saw it in my head, so I decided to write it as a book.

So it's pretty hard to compete with Emmy nominations and red-carpet premieres, but the school visits you've had have looked really cool. Can you tell us more about how a middle school came to put on a stage production of Nightmare Academy?

They were great! Strayer Middle School had invited me to come and visit them when Book 1 first came out. They were so enthusiastic -- they dressed in costume and decorated the theater to look like the Rings of the Nether. I had a blast. When I was leaving, they asked if I would consider letting them adapt the book as a stage play for a one-time only charity event. I thought that was a great idea and they did a fabulous job of it! I love that kind of energy!

I've been enjoying the Bestiary on your website- you have a lot of great new monsters, and fun twists on mythological favorites (I'm kind of crushing hard on your naughty gremlins!) Who's illustrating your beasts, and do you get to have any input (beyond what you write in the books) into the way the monster art looks?

Well, Brandon Dorman does all the illustrations in the book itself and I love his off-beat style. My good friend J.P. Targete does all the illustrations on the website and he's got a darker, creepier take on the monsters, which is really cool. I do give some input on their design, mostly to remind the artists of certain things (like Barakkas shouldn't have a left arm in a particular image...) Honestly, however, I don't want too much input, because it's enormously fun for me to just see what these guys come up with!

We're looking forward to Monster Madness, which is book 2 in your series, in September. However, I understand you're already working on Book 3. How do you keep track of your timeline to avoid spoiling fans for the next book when you're spending so much time talking about the last one?

That's a great question! I keep having to remind myself what people know and don't know in the story at any given time. The NIGHTMARE ACADEMY series is one big story and each book contains big revelations, which I don't want to spoil. Usually, I have to stop and think for a second before I answer a question to make sure I'm not giving anything away. As far as Book 3 goes -- it's already done! I'm doing revisions on it now and it's going to be called... MONSTER WAR.

As a screenwriter myself, I often find myself explaining why the film version of a book isn't "faithful" to the book. After all, 5 pages of loving description turns into two seconds of loving establishing shot, and unless you have a narrator, all that gorgeous prose between dialogue has to go! So I want to ask- which was harder, writing Nightmare Academy, the book, or the early drafts of Nightmare Academy: The Movie?

In an odd way, writing the movie was a little bit harder, mostly because, at that point, I'd written many drafts of the book and I was sort of eager to move forward with the series instead of going back over the same material in a new form. I did two drafts of the screenplay and then I stepped aside so I could begin writing Book 2 (MONSTER MADNESS). Universal studios then hired a great writer named David Reynolds to continue working on it. He's written many movies (including FINDING NEMO) so I'm really excited to see what he comes up with!

Thanks so much for your great questions and I hope you enjoy NIGHTMARE ACADEMY BOOK 2: MONSTER MADNESS!