What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.

I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.

Blind terror drove me on, with my flying stirrups whipping me into a frenzy. With no rider to carry I reached the kneeling riflemen first and they scattered as I came upon them.

Like most writers, I sit in a room and scribble a story and you don't have a connection with the people who take your story, whether it be to the stage or to the screen.

cause when there's life there's still hope