I'm one of those writers who tends to be really good at making outlines and sticking to them. I'm very good at doing that, but I don't like it. It sort of takes a lot of the fun out.

'Doctor Who' was the first mythology that I learned, before ever I ran into Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythologies.

Touched by her fingers, the two surviving chocolate people copulate desperately, losing themselves in a melting frenzy of lust, spending the last of their brief borrowed lives in a spasm of raspberry cream and fear.

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

But standing in that hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me.

I'm probably slightly more famous than I've been comfortable with. Famous enough to have my phone calls returned is about as famous as I want to be.