You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck.

In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.

My father worked in a grocery store. When the grocery chain went into administration, he eventually got a job in the naval dockyard in an office preparing the charts for the boats and the submarines before they headed out.

When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize."