The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens.

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.