I interviewed Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown and these are 5 things I learned

As Dan Brown publishes The Secret of Secrets, his first book in eight years, he reveals plans for a Robert Langdon TV reboot via Netflix - with a new, as yet un-cast, leading man. "It's been green-lit. The writer's room is going full blast, and I see things from time to time. I try to stay out of their way but I have enormous faith that they're doing a great job," says The Da Vinci Code author talking over Zoom from his home in New Hampshire.

Here are five other things I learned...

Ignore the critics

Despite being loved by readers - and having sold 250 million books - Brown hasn't enjoyed universal acclaim for his writing. So he has a simple rule of thumb: "Don't read your press. If you read your good press, you're going to get lazy and conceited - if you read the bad stuff, you'll get insecure and depressed."

The guidance came from a hugely successful woman writer, shared after some "particularly vicious reviews", who concluded: "Neither one is helpful, so just put on the blinders, write the book you would want to read, and get on with your life."

How's that going? The bestselling US author has the grace to look a little sheepish as he smiles: "It's been great advice, but I haven't quite been able to not read my bad reviews or my good reviews..."

Studying the response to his new book, The Secret of Secrets, it's no stretch to suggest he might be the ultimate 'Marmite' writer - beloved by readers since his 2003 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code - which suggested Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together - yet derided by the critics. There's an element of 'tall poppy syndrome' - the backlash that so often follows enormous success and the strange habit we have of trying to knock down anyone we think might have got a bit too big for their boots.

Talking for nearly an hour, he is likeable, self-deprecating and enthusiastic. "I write in a very specific, intentional way," he says. "Some people love the way I write, some people can't stand it. I've just come to accept that the people who like what I do are my fans and the people who don't are my critics. Tall poppy syndrome is certainly experienced around the world - particularly in the UK - but it's difficult. In any creative art, you're not gonna please everybody. Fortunately, I pleased enough people that I'm able to continue writing."

Find big ideas that get people talking - and thinking

"It's no secret I like to write about big topics - the history of Jesus, or artificial intelligence, overpopulation, these sorts of things," says Brown, 61. "I love to fuse the very old and the very new in these books. I write about Vatican secrets and anti-matter, I like that juxtaposition."

This time round, he tackles one of the biggest subjects of all - human consciousness, the idea of an afterlife and the interconnectedness of our minds. It's a topic on which he expects our understanding to dramatically alter within the next decade. Social media, he notes, is already a kind of "hive mind".

"It's the lens through which we see reality and ourselves," he explains. "Our misunderstandings and misperceptions make it so ripe for a very revelatory tale. I thought, 'This is something I want to learn about'. And if history is any guide, other people will share my taste."

No wonder it's taken eight years to write, then. "Human consciousness is a very ethereal topic," he admits. "I had to figure out how to make it into something that felt concrete and urgent. It's kind of like trying to hug smoke - you just can't quite get your arms around it."

Brown's researches have changed his attitude to death

His research for The Secret of Secrets - including into so-called 'near-death' experiences on the operating table - led him to see the world quite differently. "I fear death much, much less," he tells me. "I'm not in any hurry but I've really come to understand that there is something beyond... I don't think it's any religion's version of heaven or hell, it's something else entirely.

"But it is something and it sounds quite unifying, quite enlightened, quite affirmative. All the adjectives you hear from people who have skirted the edges [of death] are incredibly positive and peaceful - the notion that we're all alone in the world is an illusion.

There are literally thousands of medically-documented out-of-body experiences that you can read about, and I read, probably, all of them. But I also talked to people who had the experience, and really everybody has the exact same experience, which is not something that we can possibly understand.

"We've all heard the story of somebody's on the operating table, they die for ten minutes, they are resuscitated, and they say, 'I saw the whole thing. I was watching above my body, the guy with the green sweater came in and he moved that thing and then there was this machine', and the doctor said, 'Look, your eyes were taped shut and there was no brain activity. This is impossible'.

"Historically, as I say in the novel, when scientific models accumulate enough anomalies, you know the model's not right. And that's where we are with human consciousness. In the same way that when [we thought] the Earth was at the centre of the solar system there were anomalies and we brought the sun in and then suddenly everything worked, that's where we are with human consciousness. And it's going to be an amazing moment in human history, I believe, in the next 10 years, when we really start to have a better grasp of what's happening."

Make your hero likeable... and give your book a dramatic setting

Fittingly for an author whose charismatic hero-cum-alter-ego, genius symbologist Robert Langdon, played on screen by Tom Hanks, is a dashing Harvard academic and researcher ("Harrison Ford in tweed", in one description), Brown is talking from a library. He has Zoomed in from his wood-panelled study in New Hampshire complete with two-storey bookshelves filled with his work.

He chuckles: "I had a couple over the other night who had a little girl and she was a book lover and they said, 'He's got a library in his house'. And she was so excited. But she came back and said, 'It's all the same guy, there's no children's section!'"

Set in Prague, the action of The Secret of Secrets begins when Langdon, in town for a conference, returns to his hotel after a morning swim to discover his Princeton neuroscientist lover Katherine Solomon has vanished - along with the only hard copy of her new book.

Solomon's disappearance, Langdon realises, is linked to her work - which she insists will change our entire understanding of human consciousness (and has also been stolen from her New York publisher's server in an audacious hack).

But can he find her, and retrieve the manuscript, before it's too late, in a chase through one of Europe's most ancient and mysterious capitals?

"Prague is alleyways, secret passageways, towering spires. It's a dramatic city," smiles Brown. "It's custom-made for Langdon to get lost in."

This protagonist, says Brown, is "Really the guy I wish I could be. We share interests in symbolism and philosophy and art and architecture. He's passionate about all the things I'm passionate about but he's much brighter than I am.

"And he lives a very exciting life. My life, of course, is spent primarily in the dark, alone in my pyjamas!" Featuring CIA assassins, local thugs and a mysterious 'Golem' (based on the famed Jewish folklore creature), the adventure unfolds at breakneck speed.

With mysterious underground labs, religious conspiracies aplenty and frequent (and literal) cliff hangers, plus a generous helping of puzzles, codes and symbols waiting to be decoded by Langdon, The Secret of Secrets is classic Dan Brown territory.

Master failure early

Brown became a "master of failure" early in his career, for which he remains grateful. Having studied creative writing and music, he worked as a pianist and composer.

"I went to Los Angeles, signed a record deal, made a record. Nobody bought it. It was a commercial failure. And I thought, 'Well, I'm going to try to write a novel'," he recalls. "So I wrote a novel, and the very first publisher at St Martin's Press who read it, bought it. I thought, 'Oh, publishing is so easy. This is going to be great'.

"That book, Digital Fortress (1998), came out and nobody bought it - absolutely nobody."

In fact it wasn't until his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, that he was discovered and all his previous books became overnight hits.

"It's a great reminder for young writers who haven't been published or haven't had a lot of success. Just because it hasn't been a success, doesn't mean it doesn't have value, and it may find its audience later in your career."

Jack Reacher creator Lee Child likes to joke that he was an overnight success on his 10th book

"That's kind of how it feels," says Brown. "Nobody heard of me or my work when The Da Vinci Code came out and they were shocked to find there were three other books which worked wonderfully in my favour - because people who wanted to read other things by me that there was a body of work nobody had read."

• Buy The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown here