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Vote:   | As a writer I'm fairly focused. I'm something of a perfectionist and will write much more than I need to at first, then trim off the fat. |
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Vote: | As for goals, I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | As for my style, it's a hard one to pin down for them I suspect because I'm very chameleon-like when it comes to writing. I work in so many different styles depending on what I'm producing - for example the comedy style is totally different to the psychological one. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Having said that, I'm a huge Jack Nicholson fan because he just goes nuts in everything he does. Having Jack in his heyday would also be a dream come true. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I also paint, draw and I'm into film and photography as well, and the same thing applies to all of them. You're presenting this material to the general public and hoping that they're going to 'get' what you're doing. Some don't, some do. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I always treat people with respect in the hopes they'll do the same with me. That's probably naive of me, but what the hay. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I can look back at stuff I wrote in my early days and squirm at some of the mistakes I made. But we're all learning every day; we never stop. I just hope people keep on liking what I do. That gives me such a kick. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | I don't know anyone who actually likes the dark or night-time. I don't care how much they say it doesn't bother them. That's why we used to huddle in caves and light fires when the sun went down. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | I know it's popular to say this because she's the woman of the moment, but Halle Berry. Not only does she have obvious audience appeal and star quality, but she's a damn good actress too. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I like to think I'm quite a decent person with a good sense of right and wrong - well, so I've been told anyway. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I love a good laugh as well, I think that's so important in life, which is probably why I've dabbled in comedy writing as well as horror. I think if you can make someone laugh or smile it's the most special thing in the world. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | I sometimes wonder what would've happened if I'd entered the competition instead - I'd probably have come nowhere and given up on the whole fiction game. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I'm fortunate in that I'm a lecturer too and this gets me out and about and away from the computer. I also have loads of friends all around the world, plus a core group of special people in my life that I can lean on, chat to, or just hang with. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I've had a lot of very positive feedback about those stories, and seem to have struck upon something that most people feel. I can also tap dance, and don't know many other authors who can. |
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Vote: | If the character comes up against something terrible, I might say to myself: well how would so-and-so deal with this? |
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Vote: | It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began writing the thing. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | It's just research or reading, and shuffling the facts around or adding some humour to make them more interesting. |
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Vote: | My family and loved ones are also a great antidote to this. They're incredibly important to me and I count myself a lucky man because of them. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | My first short story acceptance for a start, a milestone for any writer. The competitions I won in the wake of that. The publication of my first collection, Alone (In the Dark) and watching as it sold out of its print run in record time. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | My most intimate secrets? Well, if I told you those they wouldn't be secrets now, would they? Seriously though I don't have too many secrets. I'm a very open and honest person, sometimes too honest for my own good. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists. |
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Vote: | Sometimes I'll hear a phrase or a word and write it down in my little black notebook (a writer's best mate), then come back to it and work a plot around it. |
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Vote: | That's what's so cool about writing, you get to play God, or 'Controller' if you subscribe to my mythos about the one-eyed ones. As human beings we're all pretty much powerless to control fate or whatever, so writing is one way of combating this I suppose. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The individual entries themselves were inspired by any number of different things, ranging from the paintings of Magritte to Louis Armstrong numbers, from Sherlock Holmes stories to Hitchcock's Psycho. |
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Vote: | The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone, like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book. |
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Vote: | There are one or two stories I'd love to see filmed. 'The Torturer' perhaps, or some of my Dalton Quayle adventures... the latter might work best as cartoons come to think of it. Being into movies myself, I've actually got a full-length script in mind and have started work on it. |
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Vote: | This sort of encouragement is vital for any writer. And lastly the publication of Touching the Flame, which was on hold for two years and went through a few publishers before finding a stable home. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives. |