I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.

Authors can easily produce ebook versions of novels and shorter work which publishers don't own.

The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years to write, so the 'now' with which they begin will be defunct by the time they're finished.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

I wrote my first five horror novels while I was teaching.

Not to disparage anything, but most vampire stories tend to be romance novels that are 'Twilight'-ish with metrosexual guys.

I don't plot my novels - I move along with my characters.

People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.

I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where people just sit and talk to each other about their relationships.

Graphic novels are such a visually creative world - it's really interesting what they can do in one sketch. Now I'm hooked.