What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
There are plenty.
*finding out the end. I'm not a writer who writes the end first and then writes the road to get there. I have a vague idea of what the end ought to be like, and usually in the process the characters take hold and we get somewhere within a fifty mile radius of the ending I'd originally thought up.
*letting events unfold. To hell with plotting. I let characters do the things they feel they need to do in order to solve problems, and a lot of times they surprise me with their ingenuity, their hideous malice, their bravery, and their cowardice.
*I get to be somewhere else. My life isn't the hardest, but it has its stresses, and the joy of creation takes me elsewhere, to a place where the clocks don't matter so much, and anything can happen.
What's the story behind your latest book?
I've been away from home for so long that Lincolnshire, the town behind the Alphas and Omegas series has been my way to get back in touch with my little slice of the suburbs I knew growing up. Michael grew from a supposition: that even among titans, among super people who could melt your face off, or turn themselves into ice, there is a power greater than all of them: the power of our minds. See, when people go super, they all seem to give up on their brains and start solving every single problem with their powers rather than their wits. The other idea was that, without the normal life, super people would grow into false gods, people who would forget what it was like to be human and only remember the absolute power they came to by accident.
That's the Alphas and Omegas series.
Read more of this interview.