I think I'm also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records.

In spite of advances in technology and changes in the economy state government still operates on an obsolete 1970s model. We have a typewriter government in an Internet age.

I try to write about how we live today how we use language technology our bodies.

Second we're spending a huge amount of money on technology so that everyone can check out laptops and portable phones. We're spending more money to write our existing information into databases or onto CD-ROM.

Since fantasy isn't about technology the accelleration has no impact at all. But it's changed the lives of fantasy writers and editors. I get to live in England and work for a New York publisher!

We all rely on technology to communicate to survive to do our banking to shop to get informed but none of us knows how to read and write the code.

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.

That is a secondary teacher conception - the writer as an observer.

When I was about 13 or 14 I had an English teacher who made a deal with me that I could get out of doing all of the year's regular work if I would write a short story a week and on Friday read it to the class.