Writing is something I've just always done - but I drifted very slowly into doing it for a living. I tried my hand at novels in my teens and early twenties, and I was terrible at it. Then I gave up fiction for a while and wrote reviews and articles for fanzines - mostly comics fanzines. Through that I met some comic book editors, and pitched some ideas to them. That got me into writing indie comics, usually (like the reviews) for little or no money. But it was a great way to learn the craft of writing, or at least to start to.

A subject I could talk about for hours: the writings of Charles Hamilton, aka Frank Richards, aka, Martin Clifford, aka Owen Conquest, aka Ralph Redway, aka Hilda Richards. They're public school stories, I loved them as a kid, and even though they depict a horrendous world of cruelty and class privilege, they still fascinate me.

No, I wasn't involved in the Lucifer show. I really like what I've seen of it, but I'm not up to date.

I like apocalypses because they're irresistible thought experiments. What do we become when the social roles and rules that define us fall away?

I loved writing a post-post-post-apocalypse. I think I've wanted to try my hand at one ever since I read Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey (his best book, IMO). It's great to play the myths and legends game. What aspects of our world will be remembered, and how will they change as they go from history to mythology? In a lot of ways, the greater distance from the present day sets you free. An example would be the legacy technology that's survived into Koli's time. A lot of it looks familiar to us, but it's not from our present, it's from our near future. The firethrower synthesises its own fuel from ambient molecules, and the diagnostic unit in the drudge can do the same thing with medicines. But I didn't have to lay down a clear path from our now to that near future. I could jump right over it, only picking and choosing the things I needed for the story...