Authors Electric

  I'm sure there's a very good reason why the guy at the back is drinking like that? One question I’m often asked is, “How do you come up with your stories?” I don’t know what you say to that, but I don’t know! It’s somebody laughing in a cafe; a dodgy looking car passing us, or a van driving quietly down a little road. I don’t need very much to set off my imagination and usually, life turns out way more mundane than my mind thinks it ought to be. For most of my books, I have made up the lot. They aren’t based on stories or things I have read or heard. I do have some visuals, though. For Sapphire Beach, I used the setting of one of our holidays in Crete, then adjusted it to suit my purpose. For Walled City I used the layout of a game map to visualise Elabi. A character will pop into my head, and I have learned to write down all I know about the characters. A scene might come to mind, or a few lines that I would like to include somehow. Then, for a few days or even weeks, my m...