My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it.

Most of us have one big idea at some point in our lives. That Eureka! moment. It comes to us all in different ways, often by chance of serendipity.

The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.

Life's not some slot machine in an arcade with a sign that flashes up saying 'I'm sorry, you have been killed. Would you like another go?' But we might get put through the same test each time, get faced with the same situations until we've learned how to cope.

There's no question that ghosts exist. The big question for me is whether ghosts are simply electronic imprints left in the walls or the atmosphere of places, or whether they do actually represent something from the afterlife.

Obviously I don't have whatever it is you need to be a successful writer.

Brighton is a beautiful seaside city, but it's got a dark underbelly.