The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180 000 words - but it died a death a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn't believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

Great dad. Yeah he would ask me for money on birthdays and you know inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.

Once I had all the facts in I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager I didn't have any skills for writing as such so it came out in 1500 words.

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is it makes the series limited you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.

I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.

When the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989 I was angry. I even wrote on the back of my car Boycott Exxon!