The Write and Wrong Podcast | Writing Tips, Book Publishing and Literary Agents
Aug 3, 2026 · 39 min · 12 segments
How do you write fast-paced, high-tech sci-fi that gets kids hooked on reading? Debut children’s author, Steve Blackman joins us to talk about his new middle-grade novel, Zero Override! Steve breaks…
Tell us a little bit about it.
Uh, Zero Override is about a, a 13-year-old hacker called Zero, who lives with his younger sister, Grace, in a found family of, of other hackers.
And Zero's a really great gifted hacker, but he's got profound distrust of robots for reasons that become obvious throughout the book.
He just wants to go on hacks and release money, uh, from undeserving corporations and give it to the people who need it in a kind of Robin Hood kind of way.
Um, but he discovers a virus that will wipe out the coun- all of the AI in the country, included, including that of his younger sister Grace's artificial heart.
And so no one will work harder than him to stop that happening, except a kind of mystory- mysterious bot that shows up and won't leave Zero alone.
So the only way to, to solve this is for them to go on the run together to, uh, avoid capture by MI6, to stop the virus, to save Grace, the younger sister, and maybe save the world.
Okay.
Wow! A lot going on there.
Is that when you started writing this, was, was that like what you were going for?
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, and of course, lots of conversations were about what AI was doing to publishing.
And I have a con- had a conversation with my, my brilliant agent, Callum Martin, and at the time he said, "That's a really interesting kind of thing to mine." He said, "But also, why don't you think about robots?" Because, uh, I think the Wild Robot film was about to come out, and we were looking at a number of, uh, of, of books that had come out like, you know, um, After by the brilliant Padraig Kenny.
And of course, it's easier to have an antagonist and a protagonist if they've got personalities.
And so very, very quickly, uh, the two ideas kind of enmeshed, and from that point it came together really very quickly.
Is, um, sort of technology, cutting-edge technology, is that something that you, as like a hobby, like to keep up to date with and make sure that you kind of know what's happening?
Well, it's, it's always been an interest, but for the last 25 years I've kind of, I've been very technology adjacent in my work-
Have you?
Tell us a little bit about it.
Uh, Zero Override is about a, a 13-year-old hacker called Zero, who lives with his younger sister, Grace, in a found family of, of other hackers.
And Zero's a really great gifted hacker, but he's got profound distrust of robots for reasons that become obvious throughout the book.
He just wants to go on hacks and release money, uh, from undeserving corporations and give it to the people who need it in a kind of Robin Hood kind of way.
Um, but he discovers a virus that will wipe out the coun- all of the AI in the country, included, including that of his younger sister Grace's artificial heart.
And so no one will work harder than him to stop that happening, except a kind of mystory- mysterious bot that shows up and won't leave Zero alone.
So the only way to, to solve this is for them to go on the run together to, uh, avoid capture by MI6, to stop the virus, to save Grace, the younger sister, and maybe save the world.
Okay.
Wow! A lot going on there.
Is that when you started writing this, was, was that like what you were going for?
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, and of course, lots of conversations were about what AI was doing to publishing.
And I have a con- had a conversation with my, my brilliant agent, Callum Martin, and at the time he said, "That's a really interesting kind of thing to mine." He said, "But also, why don't you think about robots?" Because, uh, I think the Wild Robot film was about to come out, and we were looking at a number of, uh, of, of books that had come out like, you know, um, After by the brilliant Padraig Kenny.
And of course, it's easier to have an antagonist and a protagonist if they've got personalities.
And so very, very quickly, uh, the two ideas kind of enmeshed, and from that point it came together really very quickly.
Is, um, sort of technology, cutting-edge technology, is that something that you, as like a hobby, like to keep up to date with and make sure that you kind of know what's happening?
Well, it's, it's always been an interest, but for the last 25 years I've kind of, I've been very technology adjacent in my work-
Have you?
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