I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.
Every novel starts with a theme, and I am constantly looking for big ideas.
There are people who can achieve huge success in life, while adding a bit of fun and a splash of colour to this increasingly grey world.
. . . I don't have concrete plans for the future. I just think of success and keep a successful attitude. Success is 99 percent preparation. If you set yourself up for winning, rarely will you fail.
A news junkie, I read, daily, the 'TimesSunday Times,' the 'GuardianObserver,' 'Mail,' and the 'Argus' - both to keep up with crime in Brighton, where I set my novels, and because I think it is vital to support local papers - they provide a unique accountability for councils, emergency services and so much else, and are dangerously undervalued.
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.
I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.
First impressions are often signals from the deep that we should credit oftener than we do.
It must have been the lack of nutrients that gave my father his temper. He is not a sweet man despite a very sweet tooth.
Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual.