TWO.

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? 

COMPLETE NONSENSE, by Edward Lear. If you are to be found in a garden with wrecked legs, ask yourself who wrecked that garden’s legs. The only book to clutch in your hand under the circumstances? This one. 

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? 

Branwell Brontë. He states, plainly, and with some degree of irritation, that no, he did NOT write Wuthering Heights. Talk turns to the Duke of Wellington, and calm is restored. 

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

Who, what, where, when, how, why? I may have stolen the concept from Kipling. 

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

In a shocking twist, we discover Frankenstein wasn’t involved in the creature’s creation. Instead, low-rent Frankenstein wannabe Doctor Orlando Watt bursts in on the scene. With a cry of “FRYING TONIGHT!” the good doctor disturbs Dracula’s concentration. Dracula recovers 90% of his lordly dignity by leaving the stage in the form of a wolf. 

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? 

Come the morning, I’ve regretted writing past the point of coherence. Often I’ve wondered where the pixies hide. The ones who come out at night and finish my chapter for me. I couldn’t have written that stuff, half-asleep. Damn those pixies, and their elfin ways! 

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

Evil twin, trapped in the wrong suitcase. All the best villains end up trapped in the right suitcase, so this twist would keep the audience guessing. 

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? 

I restrict use of pepper to soup and scrambled egg – which I once had in the same bowl. 

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? 

Surely if I save the tragic villain I take on the role of idealistic hero… 

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?
 
As the writer, I am in no position to determine which character is much-loved. I am reminded of one of the harshest pieces of literary criticism ever committed to paper. In response to the death of Sherlock Holmes, this fan’s comment, aimed squarely at Doyle, is hard to top.

   “You brute!” 

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.) 

Sometimes the accidental omission of a word will reverse your intended meaning. Consequences should be far from disastrous. The Wicked Bible of 1631 carries the classic typo Thou shalt commit adultery. 

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

The greater danger is in drinking and spraying coffee at the keyboard. I’ve been told that my writing has that effect on people. No one lost a computer yet. 

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. 

For the Twitter crowd, #Bovary. 

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

The Thirty-Nine Steps is a creature a few footfalls away from Mr Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps. Unusually, I like both equally. If you get the chance, catch the stage adaptation for four people. It’s a comedy. “HE’S ON THE RRROOF, SIRRR!” 

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. 

Don’t get me started on paper-cuts from coffee-table books. 

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

The Chronicles of Narnia. This blunder is easy to forgive, as the order of publication didn’t match the reading-order. 

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? 

Never stopped the movies. “OTHER volcano film?!” Pierce Brosnan’s 1997 volcano flick hit screens about two months ahead of the other volcano movie starring Tommy Lee Jones. Who knew 2013 would be the year of TWO besieged White House movies… 

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

Familiar with The Box of Delights, by John Masefield, I had no idea that it was a sequel to The Midnight Folk. #CLUELESSATTIMES. 

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

The best place to construct your secret passage is inside another secret passage. 

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

Sammy Jay. 

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

The train plunges into a tunnel. One of us is gone when the light returns.

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