I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.

I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

I don't do football. (Grew up in Leeds in the 1970s. Football there was indellibly associated with the National Front, i.e. violent fascist skinheads.)

It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.

I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here.

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.