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Not unless you're offering a substantial bribe anyway.

Yes, the two books I did for Virgin were my first published work. I've always known I want to be a writer and as luck would have it I've turned out to be useless at any other sort of work. I started pitching to Virgin when the New Adventures were first announced back in 1990, so I was still very young and though I'd tried to write a few things I doubt they would have been readable, let alone publishable. The New Adventures came along at exactly the right time for me, as it helped me to focus on writing a novel as a practical proposition that required discipline and ingenuity, rather than as the pipe-dream and alternative to homework it had been up until then.

I don't think I've ever seen a comment about 'Falls the Shadow' or 'The Man in the Velvet Mask' that's ever bothered me personally. There's a lot of negative comment out there, particularly about 'Velvet Mask' but I don't think I've seen a review that's upset me or got under my skin. It helps that when they were first published they got very positive professional reviews. 'Falls the Shadow' got a knock-out rave from Craig Hinton (no longer with us, sadly) in 'Evil Renegade Magazine'. I didn't have access to the internet back then, which was probably a good thing. I've never seen anything that's put me off being a writer.

I'm supposed to have given Dodo a sexually transmitted disease in 'The Man in the Velvet Mask'. I hear that so often I've stopped denying it. I just nod and smile patiently. I suspect that the real problem is that Dodo was never a character that Evil Renegade fans fantasised about and we didn't want to imagine her having any kind of sex! - if it had been the same story but with Jo or Zoe, I think I would have had an easier ride. Probably.

As for 'The Book of the War', Lawrence sucked ideas from our brains (he used a straw) then wrote it all himself...

Seriously, Lawrence circulated an email to various writers in late 2001 outlining the idea for the book and inviting us to contribute. I'd known him for about a year at that point, which is probably why I got on the list. The idea was that we'd all accept collective responsibility for the whole of the book, though since then I think it's become clear who might have come up with the City of the Saved or Cousin Octavia. You should be able to identify some of my contributions when 'Newtons Sleep' is published, though it's not the focus of the novel.

To add to the confusion, George Clooney was a regular in two entirely different TV series called 'ER', but let's not go there...

I don't think I could begin to list all my influences, as all sorts of things tend to seep into my writing from moment to moment. If I tried to write down everything that fed into 'Force Majeure', for instance, the result would probably be longer than the actual book. In terms of writers who're personal favourites and have had a consistent and long-term impact on how I approach my own work, I'd say Angela Carter, Thomas Pynchon, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman. There are probably others but those are the ones who come to mind immediately.

I'm hugely interested in the nature and history of sf as a genre but I'm not a big fan of hard-sf or adventure-orientated sf (despite the baleful presence of the Evil Renegade in my life). I tend to be interested mainly in the writers who approached it as a literary form, such as the 'new wave' writers of the 1960 (who took a lot of their cues from Burroughs, of course).

'D*ct*r Wh*' was something that was just there as I was growing up - something I couldn't ever imagine not being there - and I think the same's true of a lot of the comics writers you mention. Pat Mills and Alan Moore wrote an awful lot of the comics I read as a kid. Mills is a kind of sleeper influence. Moore I've drawn on specifically here and there, though I tend to be more inspired by his non-mainstream work such as 'From Hell' or the sadly-unfinished 'Big Numbers' than his superheroics. As far as comics influences are concerned, Gaiman is the man. When it first appeared 'The Sandman' opened my eyes to what I could do with stories, how rich and how deep they could be.

Grant Morrison was an influence, though I'm not sure that he is any more. Back in the day I suspect half the New Adventures writers were trying to be him - myself included - and I'm not sure that was a terribly healthy state of affairs. It got to the point where people were telling me how much they liked the 'Invisibles' references in 'The Man in the Velvet Mask', although I'd not actually read any of the comics until long after the book was finished.

I'm not sure I'd count Philip K. Dick as an influence. He's one of those writers whose work seems to reflect his mental state and his grasp of reality so idiosyncratically, and I'm not sure that's really something that can be reproduced or copied without coming across as a phoney. Having said that, I think of William Blake in the same way and almost everything I've done alludes to him in some way or another (hence 'Newtons Sleep'). I even had an early NA proposal rejected because it was full of Blakeiana and Virgin thought it would clash with 'The Pit'.

doloras wrote:

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Wow, don't let Lawrence hear you say that.

Lawrence has heard me say it often enough. He lives in fear of me.

JT Swift wrote:

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So did Lawrence offer much input into Newton's Sleep or were you given a free hand?

Does it referance other Faction books or audios?

Do the Great Houses play a role (or would answering that give too much away?)

The answer to that last question is - yes, that would be giving too much away! However, I think it's fair to say that there won't be any major references to other Faction novels or audios, though I may slip in the occasional unobtrusive nod here and there.

'Newtons Sleep' was first conceived in early 2005 for the MNP range. I did three different outlines back then and while I was in regular contact with Lawrence he left me mainly to my own devices. I think all the big creative choices back then were mine and I don't recall he had a great deal of input beyond pointing out what was wrong with each new draft and suggesting I do a new one.

He thought the first one was much too long - and by my estimates it would probably have ended up at around 900 pages and the writing would probably have killed me! But it's one of the strengths of the range that I, as an author, can go off and develop my own material rather than having to focus slavishly on, say, Godfather Morlock.

War Arrow wrote:

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Hope this isn't a dumb question, but am I right in assuming that Lechasseur is your own creation?

Also how do you see the environments within each of your novels relating to each other? Can Newtons Sleep, Time Hunter and Force Majeure inhabit the same "universe"? Even the Virgin books?

Oh speaking of which, and on a more prosaic level, how come you never wrote for the BBC EDAs? Did they not ask, or were you not inspired to contribute?

(I'm assuming here there isn't a BBC book you wrote that I've forgotten about, or even an audio CD - though I'm a little hazy on authorship of the latter.)

Yes, Lechasseur was completely my own creation. Under the terms of my contract for 'The Cabinet of Light', Telos had the right to reuse him - and anything else I created - in other books, which is how 'Time Hunter' came about. The idea of spinning him off into his own series didn't come about until long after I'd finished the novella.

I'm not sure if I imagine all my books happening in the same universe. Obviously the Virgin books and 'The Cabinet of Light' were all supposed to take place in the same reality but even then I wasn't trying to knit everything together. Like any author I like to imagine that everything I write is uniquely my own, so conceptually they share the same universe even if they have no narrative connections. I can't imagine the Evil Renegade ever materialising in the setting of 'Force Majeure', but it probably has more in common with 'The Man in the Velvet Mask' than 'The Man in the Velvet Mask' has with, say, 'The Shakespeare Code'.

I don't know why I never wrote the EDAs (or the PDAs for that matter)! You'd have to ask BBC Worldwide to know for sure! I wasn't asked to submit anything, though I did pitch a few things. I wasn't hugely impressed by the early BBC books but by 1999 they seemed to be getting their act together, so I spent a couple of years submitting material more seriously than before but nothing seemed to get through. After that I more or less gave up. It's not something I regret missing out on particularly, but the income would have been nice!

War Arrow wrote:

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What became of these rejected submissions? Any material in there which is likely to see the light of day in some other form? And whilst I'm pursuing this line of enquiry, where next after Newtons Sleep? Anything you're working on right now?

Some of the ideas from ex-BBC storylines found their way into 'The Book of the War', which was proposed around the time I was beginning to realise the Beeb weren't interested in publishing me. I think the entire plot of one outline is embedded in there somewhere, while a lot of the background for another became a major part of the Faction universe. I ripped myself off a lot.

At the moment I'm still recharging my batteries after 'Newtons Sleep' and I'm not quite sure what I'll do yet. I have vague ideas for a big novel but the last one of those I wrote took me five years and hasn't found a publisher yet - and I'm not sure I'm ready to go through all that again straightaway. .I have an Evil Renegade audio out later this year, but that was written in the middle of 'Newtons Sleep' and has already been recorded. So for the moment I have no plans whatsoever...

War Arrow wrote:

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Aha! I think I suddenly realise which bits you contributed to The Book of the War. Any info on the ER audio? I'll try to look out for it, as I haven't actually bought any for a few years now. Whilst there was a few good ones, there was a few I thought were the absolute worst of ER in any media, and I must admit, even the good ones I've generally found much less edifying upon second hearing - unlike the FP audios which just seem to improve each time.
Hope I'm not hogging this thread. Won't somebody else ask a question? I'm starting to feel a little self conscious here.

I'm just glad someone's asking questions at all...! I'm afraid I can't confirm or deny your suspicions about my BotW contributions, though some of them will probably come clearer when 'Newtons Sleep' appears.

The ER audio is called 'Return to the Web Planet'. Yes, it's a sequel to 'The Web Planet' (I thought this was a bad idea but they drove a lorry-load of money up to my front door and my objections disappeared). It's a free release for subscribers only, I'm afraid. What have their subscribers ever done to deserve me...?