Influences
Because I’m a thriller writer, writing about seemingly normal
people who carry out sinister deeds, doesn’t mean things don’t
affect me. All life experiences do – births, deaths, weddings
and all the rest. At some stage I will use them. As I will an uplifting
piece of music, a painting, an emotional experience – happy or
sad – a breathtaking landscape or something someone says in a
pub, an article in a newspaper. I store them all up and revisit when
I need them. I spend a lot of time looking, listening and watching
what people do. I’m naturally nosey and inquisitive, wanting
to know why people do things, their relationships, clothing, habits,
likes and dislikes and anything that makes people tick. I guess if
I just let life go by without taking any notice, I would find writing
hard.
I like
Flics. I liked Atonement, The Departed, Into the Wild, Little Miss Sunshine and Away from Her.
Music, mainly contemporary, some jazz, a little classical
Cities, particularly multi-cultural ones
Interesting, tasty food
Art, mainly modern
Cooking for friends and family
A bit of football (particularly the World Cup)
Six Nations and World Cup Rugby
Cricket when we win The Ashes
Occasional sailing
Old buildings
News (boring – but I’m interested)
Beautiful, interesting gardens
Windy, desolate landscapes
Whales and Dolphins
Endangered species
Books. My best reads recently have been Something Happened by Joseph Heller, Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee, and Fermenting Anger by Jane Bowyer.
The book that impressed me most was Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It’s fiction, but based very closely on the author’s life experience as an Australian escaped convict, who finds himself in Mumbai. Befriended by a Bombay tourist guide named Prabaker, he ends up living in one of Bombay's many slums, becoming involved with the Bombay mafia and fighting with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan. It blew my mind away.
People I respect – some are dead
JFK and his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma
Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Magdi Yacoub, Jamie Oliver, All paraplegic
sportspeople, Ranulph Fiennes and other explorers and the organisation,
Medecins Sans Frontieres, and all those that work for them.
I don’t like
Racists
Homophobia
Bland, plastic shopping centres
Bullies
Corporate Greed
Supermarkets that kill off local business and buy up land to stop
competition
Environmental destruction
Arrogant and self-opinionated people
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