At All Times, Think Like A Writer,

A Lot Of Writers, Especially Crime Writers, Have An Image That We Think We're Trying To Keep Up With. You've Got To Be Seen As Dark And Slightly Dangerous. But I'm Not Like That And I've Realised That I Don't Need To Put That On. People Will Buy The Books Whether They See A Photo Of You Dressed In Black Or Not.

I Don't Have Many Friends. It's Not Because I'm A Misanthrope. It's Because I'm Reserved. I'm Self-contained. I Get All My Adventures In My Head When I'm Writing My Books.

I Started Writing Novels While An Undergraduate Student, In An Attempt To Make Sense Of The City Of Edinburgh, Using A Detective As My Protagonist. Each Book Hopefully Adds Another Piece To The Jigsaw That Is Modern Scotland, Asking Questions About The Nation's Politics, Economy, Psyche And History ... And Perhaps Pointing Towards Its Possible Future.

I've Always Written. At The Age Of Six Or Seven, I Would Get Sheets Of A4 Paper And Fold Them In Half, Cut The Edges To Make A Little Eight-page Booklet, Break It Up Into Squares And Put In Little Stick Men With Little Speech Bubbles, And I'd Have A Spy Story, A Space Story And A Football Story.

At All Times, Think Like A Writer, And Keep Those Antennae Twitching - That Way, You Pick Up New Ideas.