i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

Once one habit peels away the others follow it. You have to hold on, or the next thing you'll find yourself parading down the street in your nightdress. Habit is everything.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.