From Sarah again!

Sarah:  Why do you write?

Colin:  I write because there`s nothing else I can actually do. I was a very, VERY bad journalist for quite a few years. You would not sit underneath a lightbulb I had fitted, you would not stay in any house in which I had rewired a plug. I am extremely shy, I am not good with new people, I have stumbled by some wonderful miracle into publishing and now I am extremely happy writing my books and screenplays. My wife says I don't live in the real world, and I'm very pleased that I don't have to.

Sarah:  Why is there a sudden deluge of books lampooning the publishing industry this year? Do you feel like you have revived a trend?

Colin:  Don't know, just the way it goes, one year its sharks, the next year it's publishers. Or is that the same thing? It's setting the trend which is probably the secret. Chapter & Verse may not have been the first published, but it was probably the first written as I'm fairly prolific my books tend to sit around for a couple of years before they are published. And then you get accused of jumping on the bandwagon.

Incidentally - as an anti-social writer living in the backwoods of Northern Ireland, I don't get out much, and although I work occasionally in film and TV I don't actually know any `celebrities`. So I'm starting to get worried. He's not known in America, but I wrote the British comedy actor `Bill Oddie` into Turbulent Priests (and killed him ruthlessly); on one of my very rare trips to London I turned round in a record shop and he was standing behind me. I ran away before he could start complaining. Then I wrote Mike Tyson into `OF Wee Sweetie Mice and Men` - and on my next trip to London I  bumped into him coming out of a jewelry store with his entourage. Again I ran. Then last week I was in Paris and just entering my hotel when I saw Woody Allen coming towards me - but before he could attack me for featuring him in Empire State I ducked into a different corridor. Where the Dalai Lama was standing. He hasn't been in any of my books yet, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.