When you start becoming a pop star, you think, Hold on a second, maybe my life is different now - maybe all these people that I thought of as celebrities are going to be normal, and when I walk into a room I'm going to be really cool and so is everyone else. But that's not what happens at all - I was awkward, and then I just retreated from any social engagement for about a year.

There's no coherent stylistic genre specific advice that I could provide.

Growing up, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson. I saw him at Wembley when I was 7 years old, it was my first proper show. He was like a god to me.

I love the necessary ambiguity of short stories - there simply isn't time to render every detail, so much of the story that orbits the literal prose must happen in the reader's imagination. Who knows, maybe the dwindling attention spans means a lucrative future for short story writers.

Music drives me insane, the incessant presence of music in my life. It informs how I see the world; it drives me crazy

When you start becoming a pop star, you think, Hold on a second, maybe my life is different now - maybe all these people that I thought of as celebrities are going to be normal, and when I walk into a room I'm going to be really cool and so is everyone else. But that's not what happens at all - I was awkward, and then I just retreated from any social engagement for about a year.

I need to keep my dancing on the right side of weird, otherwise it might get a bit like "American Idol."