A good story is always a journey. It is about taking the journey, the people the hero meets along the way and how they change him or her. All stories are journeys. They don't have to be shocking or outrageous: they simply have to be interesting.

Presents are the best way to show someone how much you care. It is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say, Hey man, I love you this many dollars-worth.

He is many things - dangerous and devious, cunning and deadly, a good friend and an implacable enemy - but he comes from an age when a man's word was indeed precious.

Once you have been touched by magic, you are forever changed. You leave a trail.

Am I a hero? I really can't say, but yes.

I've published over 100 books - and that is divided about 50/50 adult and young adult. Lately, I have been writing more YA, which is such a great genre to write it. I don't have a favourite (I usually say it's the last book I've written), but certain books do stick in the mind. My very first YA novel, The Children of Lir, will always be special to me, and, of course The Alchemyst because it was a series I'd wanted to write for ages.

I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."