My influences

Pretty much for the last 30 years or so there have only been two writers of fiction whose books I would buy in hardback immediately I saw them on the book shelves. They are George MacDonald Fraser and Terry Pratchett. MacDonald is a master of adventure story writing. Pratchett is the greatest conjuror of ideas I have known. I don't want to (and indeed, lacking the skill, cannot) write like them. But more generally they are what I aspire to. It doesn't matter if I fail. The aspiration is enough. Then of course there are all those adventure writers of the Victorian age that push me on and defy me to do better - Jules Verne, HG Wells, Rider Haggard, Kipling, Anthony Hope, Conan-Doyle, Jerome, Chesterton, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and so many others. I like to think in the dark times that I have a cheer squad in heaven rooting for me to write the next line.