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As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.

For many years I was engaged in journalism, writing articles and chronicles for the daily press without ever joining the staff of any newspaper.

Getting out any weekly magazine requires many hours of reading, choosing, discarding, and thinking beyond the obvious.

I still have a full-time day job, which is why it took me five years to write An Ear to the Ground, and why I won't have another book finished by next week.

I liked journalism and thought it was important, certainly more important than fiction. I'd probably still be doing it if I hadn't been elbowed out.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

A career in journalism suddenly lost its appeal.

I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.