Although I love novels like Faulkner's 'The Sound And The Fury', Bellow's 'Herzog', Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness' and many others, I usually come back to Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' when people ask me, 'What's your favourite novel?' The writing is exquisite, the imagery resonant and the characters are well drawn - and, crucially, it's not a word too long. It says just about everything there is to say about the human condition in a way that is crafted to glitter like a precious jewel. To add a fifth title, Arthur Miller's 'Time Bends' held me in its trance and left me feeling that it was written by a very wise and very human individual, whom I would love to have known.

I have always read novels, but find myself reading more non-fiction as I get older. When either my wife or I travel back to the UK from France, we usually bring home a copy of Vanity Fair, which usually gives a week or more's good, varied reading. In idle moments, I find myself dipping time and again into the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. I used to read sports magazines from cover to cover, but these days pick up enough stuff in that respect on the internet.

None. I am not very good at marketing, despite having attended several courses on the subject in my days as a training officer when living in England. I should use Facebook more, but I find that there are too many things to do.

My desk is horribly cluttered despite all good intentions and periodic interventions. It includes a little leather Scottie dog, which has become the hero of a projected series of novels for children. Betty Boop appears from within a drawer of an Ikea chest thingy, posing beside a red plastic clothes peg. Each of the nine drawers are full of clutter. I have a pretend lit cigarette with a pile of ash ready to fall from it as a reminder of how fortunate I am that I never became addicted to the habit.

I grew up first in North London and then in Belfast. I used to read comics and watch cowboy programmes on TV, like Bronco Layne and Laramie, so my first literary efforts were strip cartoons devoted to a peculiar version of the Wild West that might at any moment accommodate a removal van hurrying along a motorway. Much of my childhood years in Belfast was devoted to creating fictional football and cricket worlds and their stars. I would keep copious records of games played - mostly on paper, but sometimes on a felt Subbuteo pitch - and, indicative of what an insatiable collector I was to become, I still have many of these crammed notebooks. Somewhere among all the clutter.

I started writing at about age 4 or 5. I couldn't understand why an old lady laughed when I told her that I wanted to be a book maker when I grew up. It seemed perfectly reasonable.

'Essential Questions' was really motivated by the desire to make people think about whether they really, really want to move to France and to prevent them making some of the elementary mistakes that my wife and I made when we moved here back in 1995. My latest book, 'Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow' - not yet 'outed' via Smashwords - re-visits the living hell of project-managing the building of our straw bale house in a way that will, I hope, make people laugh and think about whether it's wise to put themselves through it should the occasion ever present itself.

Necessity. After a lifetime of writing in various capacities, I realised that it's part of my DNA. I'm not going to shake it off in exchange for a life of putting my feet up and twiddling my thumbs. And, although I've found conventional publishers in the past, the process can be so time-consuming and damaging to one's fragile ego, why not produce your own books and join the current publishing revolution?

At times, the need to write can be like a millstone around your neck. But at other times, when everything's flowing freely, the act of creation is an invigorating and life-enhancing sensation. I love editing, too, and playing with words so that they fit together like a puzzle.

I'm currently finishing off a children's novel based on the canine character that sits on my desk looking at me in a pointed way to suggest that I should be working harder. And then I shall attempt an adult novel that's as good as 'The Great Gatsby'. No wonder I've started only to lapse on a number of occasions. After that, I have been nurturing a little project that combines my love of writing with my passion for music.

Usually accompanied by music of some form, I spend a lot of my time either prevaricating or carrying out the many different tasks associated with being a house-husband in the countryside: every day, for example, I get my wife her breakfast before she goes off to work; I choose her a CD for her journey; I walk our ageing dog, while exercising to build the muscles that should compensate for the debilitating effects of age on my lower back; I cut wood for the winter and tame the vegetation in spring and summer; I shop for food and, if I've been a particularly good boy, I go hunting for music at knock-down prices in the modern equivalents of pawn shops; I make dinner; and then I might watch a film in the evening and finish with a spot of reading before my eyes shut and the book crashes to the floor. That kind of thing.

Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Bellow, Roth, Conrad, Nabokov, Melville, Updike, Henry James, Walker Percy, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Ford, Evelyn Waugh, Carson McCullers, Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Russo, John Irving, Rohinton Mistry, Graham Greene. Oh, and a special mention to three writers for creating individual books that never fail me whenever I flick through them: Ralph Ellison for 'Invisible Man', Flann O'Brien for 'The Third Policeman' and John Kennedy Toole for 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.