"Night sky was black and then there was blood, morning crack of light on the edge of the earth." The ideal first sentence contains within it an intim….

I'm not quite Honoré de Balzac, but I can't start without a strong espresso. After an hour and a half or so, I need another. Nothing else, mind, and ….

I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anyt….

I read continually and don't understand writers who say they don't read while working on a book. For a start, a book takes me about two years to writ….

I need my trusty Mac laptop to write. I can't work with anything else. I'm used to the feel of the keys. I also like, more than anything else, Apple'….

I write in Times New Roman, 12 point, and arrange the margins so that the screen looks like a page from a book. This spurs me on to make the writing ….

While I read almost all my newspapers online, I'm not a big fan of e-books because I like to see what I've read and remember it. Books are a way of m….

Sometimes, I like to imagine the perfect reader - the reader who not just understands what I am about, but soaks up every word as if it were written ….

I particularly like the catchphrase of Leonardo Da Vinci: Ostinato Rigore! (Which means, pretty much, Relentless Rigor)..