Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.

I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?

Most people think spies are afraid of guns, or KGB guards, or barbed wire, but in point of fact the most dangerous thing they face is paper. Papers carry secrets. Papers carry death warrants. Papers like this one, this folio with its blurry eighteen year old faked missile photographs and estimates of time/survivor curves and pervasive psychosis ratios, can give you nightmares, dragging you awake screaming in the middle of the night.

We are, after all, homo economicus.

I was an early adopter: have been on the internet continuously since late 1989, barring a six-month loss of access in the early 90s.

I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries.