I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.

People with children and people with their own business always pick up a ringing phone.

I've worked for law firms, I've worked for corporations, and for the past 20 years, I've been writing working for myself, and believe me it's a lot better. That's a big part of the James Bond panache, that you're responsible, 100 percent responsible, for the success or failure of your mission in life, whatever it is.

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

Robert Rotenberg does for Toronto what Ian Rankin does for Edinburgh.