TEN.

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?

That dangerous asbestos-covered tome, considered useless under other circumstances.

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?

Once again, the first name that springs to mind is that of a living author. Okay. Try harder. Leo Marks. The code man at the Special Operations Executive. We skip all that and I ask him about his movie-work.

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

The torture of answering this question once more. Another six items. Experiences, to fuel the writerly mind. A slip marked REJECTION. That kiss in the dark. Letting a story go. The sensation of bitter coffee swirling around a mouth containing a square of dark chocolate. Helping an unpublished writer. Becoming published.

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

John Henry beats the machine. Every bloody time.

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?

Must…reach…bomb…in…next…twelve…seconds…

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

Birthday present with spring-loaded custard pie. In a suitcase. Handed to the wrong twin. By the evil twin. Though that is a mistake. And the evil twin spends the rest of my story trying to recover the device.

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?

Astonishingly, the explosion that kills off the villain accidentally extends from the book into my office. I am rendered comatose – unable to write a sequel.

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?

Being comatose, neither.

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?

Trees within five miles are garnished with jam. No explanation is given to the outside world, and the mystery is attributed to the coincidental arrival of the Perseid meteor showers around August of each year.

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.)

Wayward typing leads to all kinds of cunning stunts.

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

No. Given that I am also the questioner, I suspect my answer was – to use a technical term – a lie.

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.

Charlotte’s World-Wide Web.

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

Soup. Keeps me going.

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.

Readers may suspect that it’s becoming harder to answer these questions as they unfold, blog on blog. Luckily, I have a few distracting sentences available to me. That being one of them.

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

I’ve eaten meals in the wrong order. What hope, then, for books?

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?

If I see the other author using and, but, or the, I remove those items from my tale.

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

If I name the tale here, I’ll have to kill some of you. Killing all of you may take some time, armed, as I am, with a crumpled receipt. It’s for soup.

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

In the middle of an airport. Under a helicopter which is always awaiting maintenance.

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

An average day, for me.

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

We struggle to keep our heads above gravy. It’s that kind of train.