This could be a long list. I like different writers for different reasons. Two that stand out are Joseph Heller for Catch 22, which completely changed my outlook on the world after reading it when I was a teenager, and George Orwell for 1984, which was another political awakening for me in my early teens. I then stumbled upon William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Iain Banks after finding a bookmark that listed 'must read' authors. Then there's Hunter S. Thompson, the Great Gonzo, whose wild style, both in life and his literature, I massively admire. Irvine Welsh, Anthony Burgess, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Philip K Dick, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, J D Salinger, Lester Bangs, Kafka, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Pynchon, Sue Townsend, J G Ballard, Douglas Adams, Douglas Coupland, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Anything darkly humorous, really.

Tea.

This could be a vast answer! I spend my time doing all of the other things that aren't writing! I suppose this is a round about way of asking what I do in my spare time, but it doesn't exactly specify that, so I'm just being pernickety. I mainly try to think of ideas for my next piece of writing, while exploring the world in a continual investigation into these strange and unfathomable creatures known as "humans". And going to punk gigs.

Wow, that's a bit of a stretch of the memory. I expect it was a short story at school about what I did at the weekend or on holiday. I remember one about being ill and visiting the doctor, and them telling me that I have the mumps, and I replied, "That's funny, I've got the mumps too!" I also used to write about me and my brother being taken to the pub by my dad, which must have been an interesting and revealing window into our lives for the teacher. We always got bacon flavoured crisps, a coke, and 10p to play on the Galaxians arcade machine, which was great!

Process?! Ha ha! I wish! There's no such thing. I just sit and write down what's been fermenting in my head. That's all there is to it. Or I don't write, which happens half the time, but that's what Grand Theft Auto is for.

The first story is going to be quite a way back! I suppose technically it would've been one from school. I think it may have been about a group of mice, or perhaps rats, but it's a bit fuzzy. We read the Roger Red Hat and Billy Blue Hat books, which were fairly basic, but you're not going to be able to dip into Tolstoy at that age, are you? I used to love The Hungry Caterpillar and The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark. They were a couple of my favourite children's stories, and The Little Wooden Rocking Horse. Good central characters, you could say 'solid', who were slightly scared of the world around them, but came out alright in the end.

I grew up in the heady hubbub of Norwich, a nowhere place that informed much of my first novel, Needles and Pins, as it is a place very much like this that Kevin, the protagonist, escapes from to the bigger city, as I did when I moved to Manchester. That was an eye-opener, in many ways, and not all that you'd expect. By the end of my teens, after discovering alcohol and the opposite sex, I was getting bored of the familiar surroundings. There were only three night clubs in Norwich at the time (the mid-nineties), they were all fairly crap, and I'd been to all of them far too many times. I wanted to experience the excitement of a thriving metropolis, and Manchester certainly was that. Compared to Norwich's laid back, meek quietness, Manchester is a brash, rowdy, frightening place. There was always something to do in Manchester, unlike Norwich, and many crazy, unnecessary people there, so this contrast had an impact on me and my views of the world. Now, in hindsight, both places have their pockets of creative artistic people who make things happen in different, innovative ways, and each has its charms as well as its faults. Shame the two couldn't be nearer each other, but there's nowhere that seems to be a moderate level of activity, without being totally unhinged, in between.

Read the book to find out!

Punk rock.

I have some level of success?

The paycheck (joking! as if I'll ever get one!). I like crafting a good line, shaping a curious character, or coming up with a quirky plot development. Finding out that the characters do things that you don't expect them to is also one of the most enjoyable parts of writing.

There's a sequel to Needles and Pins that I've got in my head that I'm itching to write, set throughout the Eighties, with all of the idiosynchratic antics that that will involve. I also have a set of comedy books that are in the running that I'm looking forward to getting into shape, and my novel about local elections that I need to finish in time for the General Election in 2015. Should be quirky!