Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.
I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important.
Anyone who's traveled with me to Afghanistan knows why I love this book: 'War,' by Sebastian Junger.
Back in the day, I used to read 'Archie,' but I haven't been a comic book aficionado.
I wasn't a comic book aficionado at all when I was a kid, but my cousin Weed was. Every time we went to visit him on the farm, he had two really fun things: comedy albums and comic books.
I wasn't as big a comic book aficionado as some of my friends, but I definitely had some Batman comics.
I've always been a Dracula/vampire aficionado, being half-Romanian myself. Dracula has always been close to my heart - in fact, I have a first edition of Bram Stoker's book. I read it over and over again as a young kid.
The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.
As I plotted 'Blueprints,' I realized that ageism against women is most obvious in the field of entertainment - and that I needed a TV show in my book.
I like to think 'The God Delusion' is a humorous book. I think, actually, it's full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it's just that very often they haven't read it.
The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.
I'll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you're trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different voices in the book.
To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a chapter in a book, every bit as tedious and hopeless and halting. But this is not to say that the piano hasn't helped my writing. It has, just not in the ways I expected.
I don't live in New York or California. I'm in the grocery store, at the park with my kids, and I'm a normal person. I'm feeding my chickens and agonizing about my next book!
The only airline I avoid like the plague is Ryanair. I don't like that, when you book, there are then all of these little extras to pay for, and you end up paying more than just flying with British Airways.
As a child, I had the opportunity to meet the captain onboard a British Airways flight. It was so exciting to see the cockpit and controls. I was in awe of the captain, and he stamped my log book, which I still have to this day.
As far as characters are concerned, Alan Partridge makes me wet myself. I'm currently reading the book and have started talking like him as an unfortunate consequence.
