I have a real weakness for Generation One Transformers. Only Generation One. I loved them as a kid, and I will, when I have the money, search occasionally for the toys that I could not afford but deeply desired as a child.

First published in 1984 when I was nothing more than sticks of bone at seven, 'Dragons of Autumn Twilight' began what would be one of the icons of my grunge-stained disenchanted childhood.

I was, without a sliver of a doubt, a no-good, lazy slacker of a child, and after I discovered literature, I was totally and utterly a no-good, lazy slacker of a child who read books. A lot of books, good and bad, but my favourite - the books I read and reread in my teens - were by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Both villains and heroes are a bit boring, really, unless they're flawed and broken somehow. If they're not flawed and broken, then clearly they need to be broken and made flawed. That's what an author does if he or she has any dignity.