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I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.

Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I had never written anything longer than a couple of pages till then and was foolishly attempting to write a hundred-thousand words.

I wanted to be a novelist for so long.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

I took two years away from making films to write a novel.

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.