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Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, 'Crank,' with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

I assumed 'Freak the Mighty' was probably too weird and melodramatic to find a publisher. I certainly never expected the book to have a profound influence on my career as a writer, but indeed it has.

I can't pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.

I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.

It breaks my heart that we are always being nudged toward the most recently published books, when so many worthy books have gone unexplored.

The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me.

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.