Talk about burning books and burning bushes, I think that reading an effective novel can be like being immersed in fire and emerging as something a little different.

In everything I write, I seek out something which I term, 'the music'. This is an energy centre which I cannot define and which lies beyond the realm of obvious poetic technique.

I no longer attempt to rationalise inexplicable phenomena; there are explanations, Horatio, but they are likely to be beyond our ken.

My motto is: write about anything you bloody well like; just make sure you do it effectively. We've all had all the emotions, the rest is research and that leap which some can do and others cannot - it's not really something you can learn, otherwise all academics of literature would be wonderful fiction writers.

When I was a child, I used to go wandering - disused railway-lines, old barns, dry-stone walls, strangely Pre-Raphaelite copses - it's much more fun to wander than to be guided, and you could do it in those days with freedom and without paranoia. In similar fashion, I try to allow the reader room to wander, even to meander, to almost lose themselves and their grip of the narrative.

Words become, 'product', so that it is as though you'd bought a 'hand-cooked' packet of crisps; there are different makes, various flavours, but in the end, they're all rather similar and while eating them while sipping white wine makes you feel posher than if you'd bought the bog-standard ones, afterwards you don't remember very much about them.

In effective literature, ideas emerge from matter, not the other way around. So I squeeze the dirt for all it's worth and watch the sparks and diamonds fly. Add to this, the lubrication which music can provide, and you've got a workable literary form. Even when we reach the stars, we'll still be gazing down into the gutter.