The afrit batted his eyelashes with a ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?" "A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!" I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope never heard of you. Now if you'll just-

"I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you" - here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly - "is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.

As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.

That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.

I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They're fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It's an odd mix of fantasy and reality.

Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.