ELEVEN.

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

Escaping from Burning Buildings by R. Sonist.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Robert Benchley. He does a whole routine about the cake. His ghost is transparent, adding to the mirth.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

This question AGAIN. How many times can the same writer answer this by not answering? Six essential items? Carpet, for lying on. Lockable door. Key to lockable door. Short fingernails for typing. Long nights. The sense of not having enough time and knowing the time should be filled with writing anyway.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

Spartacus.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

I throw myself bodily from the window, landing atop a passing carriage. There, on the roof, I do battle with the minions of Professor Moriarty. It is possible to throw yourself astrally from the window. That’s only useful if fighting ghosts.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

Atomic bimbo. Marginally less dangerous than the atomic bomb.

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

The atomic bimbo has the knack of surviving anything I throw at her. Oh, come on, audience. You are making your own jokes up now.

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

If I save the atomic bimbo, does that make me evil?

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

If this happens in January, I take the pine tree down.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

In promoting another author, I almost wrote Time for a sex sighting of Suzanna Williams. You have to go a fair bit out of your way when typing a second sighting to get that wrong.

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

I recall writing of Suzanna Williams. More than that, I dare not say, for lawyers may be summoned.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

The Solar Wind in the Willows.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

Cold weather over hot.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

Yes – 847 times.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

I’ve never started with the middle chapter.

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

All references to unicorns are removed from my files. Including that reference. The word unicorns was added by the computer, in place of unicorns.

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

The Silence of the Lambs.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

Inside another story. Have I given that answer already? I’ll do another answer. In the sole of the giant’s boot. Unless Jack climbs the beanstalk to battle a barefoot giant. Need a better answer. Inside the telephone. Modern telephones are so tiny, there are NO electronics inside them. True. So there’s plenty of room for a secret passage.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Havana Bush.

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

The bride keeps walking, ripping half her dress off.