Where are you from?
I’m from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Who are your favorite writers?
Too many to list here but I’ll try. Dead: Herodotus, Tacitus, Cicero, Seneca, Montaigne, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Melville, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Chandler, Hammett, Hemingway, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, PK Dick, Angela Carter. Living: Thomas Pynchon, James Ellroy, Cormac McCarthy, Don Dellilo, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Ken Bruen, Donna Tartt, Alan Moore, JG Ballard et alia.
Which book/books have had the biggest influence on your writing?
The Great Gatsby, Decline and Fall, Ulysses, The Big Sleep, Red Harvest, As I Lay Dying, The Glass Key, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Maltese Falcon, The Sun Also Rises.
What are your hobbies and outside interests?
I go surfing and I play rugby.
What is the single best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
"If you’re arrested in New York ask the arresting officer if you can make this a ‘desk appearance’ rather than going to Central Booking (and ulimately Rikers)."
What is your favorite quote?
"Times are bad, children disobey their parents and everyone is writing a book." - Cicero
What is the question most commonly asked by your readers? What is the answer?
Q: "Where do you get your ideas from?"
A: "I have no bloody clue."
What inspired you to write your first book?
I lived in Harlem for six years and I had accumulated a lot of material about the characters I worked and lived with and I needed an outlet for it.
Where do you write?
Usually the public library.
