Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

People, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different. No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.

I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.

He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.