About the Author

Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé. It's a fantastic story of loyalty to your friends, never giving up on them or anything else, and it's got a yeti in it. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is another great one, largely because it breaks all the rules of writing they force on you and is all the more brilliant because of it.

You have an idea for a book, spend ages writing it, and then a thought occurs to you that changes everything. When this first happened to me, I put that second idea to one side, to come back to in another book, and pushed on with the original idea. Wrong! You should chuck everything away and start again. That's because your second idea, the one you had when you'd immersed yourself in the matter, is always better than the first. And, even more importantly, you've opened up your mind and your creativity. You're open to new ideas, and that means even better ones will come. You should see the first draft of The Unicorn Society. A completely different book.

After the last answer, you know it was so long I don't even like to think about it. But it's fun, and it's good. In some ways, you never stop writing it, but there just comes a point where you have to let go.

A lifelong friend once said he always knew I was going to be a writer because when we were children I was always writing Dracula stories and who knows what. I'd completely forgotten all about that, but that's where it started. I've been an advertising copywriter and a journalist wriiting about all sorts of stuff, especially sport, but always wrote fiction and plays at the same time.

The best books are the ones that change the whole way you think about life. You're one person before you read them, and another person afterwards. It's a big part of growing up. I wanted to write one of those.