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.

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes.

Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.

If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year.

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

The problem with ebook filesharing is simply one of scale. But I think the "piracy" problem is massively over-rated.

I began my first novel when I was 15. It went through three drafts, of around 40,000 words each. If I find it, I'll burn it.