All my favourite memories as a teenager - and I insist you fully judge me for this - are of sitting in my bedroom, reading. I have a huge family and, as the only black sheep introvert, my escape was hiding away with a novel. I would withdraw from all the loudness and reality of my life with a novel that made me laugh, cry and - above all else - pretend.
Writers' careers

'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more