Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)

I don't like Amazon (wearing my author hat, not my customer hat).

I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I'm a child of the cold war: I didn't live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don't even know you exist - there's something Lovecraftian about that, isn't there?

I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries.

What I'm hoping for is something that goes much, much further than the conservative enablers of dog-eat-dog capitalism putting on a puppet show of cleaning house. But that's probably not going to happen just yet.

The Magician's Land is a triumphant climax to the best fantasy trilogy of the decade.

My agent is based in New York. And due to a historic accident, my publishing track is primarily American - I'm sold into the UK almost as a foreign import! So I'm quite out of touch with what's going on in UK publishing.