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The world is energies as well as objects, and we’re constantly realising that there are some beans we haven’t counted yet. You know, I’d better stop while there are still some metaphors I haven’t mixed.

What advantages and disadvantages do you see in using fantasy as the vehicle for your stories?

I never really had any choice. I don’t think I could write totally realistic fiction, although I’d be curious to try. For me, the spectrum that extends from horror through fantasy to science fiction is where I feel most comfortable and where I wanted to pitch my tent as a writer.

Coming back to the previous question, not believing in Heaven doesn’t reconcile me any better to Earth. I’m happiest when I’m cutting off at an odd angle, playing with counter-factual worlds."

"It almost feels to me as though fantasy is a dimension - I mean, in the same way that length and height and breadth are dimensions. My step-father-in-law, Eric, finds it hard to read any fantastic literature because he can’t take that first step of investing belief in the fiction - of accepting its premises.

I said to him once ‘so you’re like a guy who loves ice cream, but only ever eats vanilla’. It was a really unfair comparison, but I feel that strongly about the pleasures and experiences that fantasy has to offer. I’d feel like I was living in Flatland if I tried to write something that was wholly realistic.

Do you find it frustrating that so much excellent work is currently being produced in SF and fantasy but that by and large it is still ignored by the literati?

I did, once.

I think Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling between them have done a lot to kick those doors down.

Do you have any particular favourite authors who have influenced your work?

Mervyn Peake. Ursula LeGuin. China Mieville. And in comics, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison. I love and seek out two things: outrageous ideas and a vivid, chewy or elegant written style. The writers I come back to again and again are the ones that seem to me to offer both of those things.

Doû sio m you have a set writing routine and if so, what is it?

I don’t really have a routine in terms of how my working day is structured. I have a core working day, which is from 8.00 a.m. when the kids go to school to 4.00 in the afternoon when they usually come back. Most evenings, though, I’ll go back and do a couple more hours after that. I work weekends - Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon.