When I was growing up, if there was a Young Adult section of my town's library, I missed it. I wandered right from 'The Babysitter's Club' over to Stephen King. His books were big and fat and they seemed important. I eventually worked my way through most of the shelf, but 'It' is the one that stuck with me.

I keep waiting for things to get back down to whelming, but they stay at overwhelming.

I liked the idea of having actual magic performed as stage magic, so you could assume that it was just a trick, that something is all smoke and mirrors, but there's that, like, feeling at the back of your mind: What if it's not?

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

It's a unique situation as well because England is a small country, so it makes it easy for the fans to travel. If we play down in London, they get buses and we'll get three or four thousand fans come down. They'll all sit in the same area and show their support for the team.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

I hate to travel. I don't go anywhere.

A century ago the Spanish flu confounded scientists and devastated whole regions, but while today's society has air travel and an enormous, heterogeneous population, we also have antibiotics, fantastic communication networks and, perhaps most crucially, more data than ever.