I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.

Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.

I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

I was always determined that one way or another I would force a book on the world, even if I had to resort to writing one about a tabby cat who solves mysteries.