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

I don't buy the 'cynical voice'; I think we've had too much of that over the past few years; it's become deadening. I'm a passionate person, who is not afraid to express emotion in print.

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.

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.

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.

Inspiration comes from books, music, films and of course, living memories and life experiences, my own and those of people I've known or met; the casual glimpse from the stranger or the life and death of the close relative; to breathe, for a moment, a Chekhovian air, it's all song and ice.

If you read many contemporary literary novels today, you may notice that regardless of the subject matter there's a 'sameness' about them, the way in which thoughts are expressed and ideas, conveyed, the sometimes dogmatic application of what are, at best, useful maxims such as, 'less is more', the narrative techniques utilised, even the same, irritating, stylistic devices scattered like pepper all over the pages.