I was born in the North East of England at the end of the Sixties. I grew up on a New Town near Darlington through the Seventies and Eighties.

I studied at Lancaster University, writing my first novels there. They were published in the Nineties by Chatto and Windus. I became a University Lecturer and Creative Writing tutor, working at UEA in Norwich, and then MMU in Manchester. I live in Manchester with my partner, Jeremy. I’ve published about twenty-odd books, including novels for teens, adults and Doctor Who fans.

How long have you been writing for?

Since I was about nine.

What made you want to write? Who made you want to write?

My Mam has always read lots of novels and I got that love of reading from her. She also made it seem quite possible that, if I wanted to write novels, then that’s what I’d grow up to do.

My Big Nanna used to read to me, before I could read for myself. She would pretend she had lost her voice, and couldn’t go on. The first things I learned to read were thick Annuals of Disney retellings of fairy tales. I started writing and drawing my own, almost immediately. I was very fond of drawing books and writing books of all kinds. My Mam would buy them for me – and reading books – even when she couldn’t really afford to. I would listen carefully to my Mam and my Big Nanna, Little Nanna and Aunties talking and gossipping and telling tales. All of these things went swirling around in my head, until I started school, and there I learned that one of the things they wanted you to do was write stories for them. And mine were always a mishmash of scandal and fairy tale characters and nonsense I’d made up. My stories would go on for page after page. I’d spend too long on them. I’d get carried away. At one point I even had a toy typewriter and I’d bash out sequels to books I liked in blood red ink, and present them to my bewildered teacher.

So I can’t really remember when I actually started. This is something I’ve always done. Thinking up the most outlandish things I can, and making them happen to characters who seem somehow familiar.

Maybe when I was in my late teens I had a moment of doubt, and thought: No one is going to let me get away with doing this for the rest of my life. Maybe I should learn to do something else. Something more sensible.

But I didn’t.

I have a problem with ending things. I don’t think stories really have natural endings. They seem to me to just go on and on. The endings we have are just convenient stopping places, like motorway services. And I like that: the idea that it never has to finish. That’s why I like the question, ‘How did you get started?’ Somehow it implies that once embarked on, this whole thing just never stops.

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Days like today. It’s January, and cold and sunny in south Manchester. Today I’ve been at home and I’ve written over two thousand words of what I hope is going to be a new book for kids. I’ve been writing a chunk of it each day since Christmas and I’m loving it. And now that day’s work is done. I go out to the post box to send some letters and have a walk about for a bit. Soon I’ll cook dinner, we’ll go shopping tonight. The best thing about writing is feeling pleased with your day’s work, however big or small the word count. Doing it every day and knowing it’s as good as you can do. Knowing it’s like nothing anyone else, ever, in the world has written. Only you can write this. If you don’t do it, no one else ever will. There’s no reason for this book to exist the world, other than your sheer delight in sitting down today and doing another little piece of the puzzle. That’s a brilliant job. And knowing that people will read it, in the not-too distant future.

Having other writer friends is a great thing about being a writer, too. Seeing them for dinner every now and then. Knowing that, in this city, there are loads of other writers I know, going about their business, writing their books, just the same. All of us are carrying on some weird kind of project, separate but related to the world. It’s about making stuff up and making it real and getting away with it. Fab.

Do you have a favourite genre to write in and also to read?

I read everything. I like, in my own work, to blend genres (eg, gothic with mystery, sf with domestic realism) and I like to read fiction that has strong characters, mad plots, lots happening.

Throughout all these differing genres, do you find that throughout your writing there are any major reoccurring themes?

Yes – lots. Outsiders. Magic. Time. Friendship. Love. Those are the biggies.

What did you read growing up, and what is your all-time favourite book?

For much of my life my favourite books have been: Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach and David Whittaker’s Doctor Who and the Daleks. I loved the books we read at school, too: Eric Houghton’s Steps out of Time; Robert C O’Brien’s Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH; Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden; Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War; John Christopher’s The Guardians. All of them, I still wouldn’t be parted from.

My favourite adult novels, that I’ve read again and again, are Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe; Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin; Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs; John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire; Armistead Maupin’s Maybe the Moon.

I’ll think of a million more after this, I know, and kick myself for not mentioning them. I’ve thousands of novels, though, in our house. I need to have everything I’ve ever read, to hand, right by me. And I need a full bookcase of books I’ve never read, all ready for me. I buy books all the time. I love secondhand bookshops and charity shops more than proper, shiny new bookshops these days.

What do you do with your spare time when you’re not writing?

I read, probably far too much. I teach, and these days I teach only half as much as I used to. I love teaching people to write novels, though. Also, I watch a lot of TV drama, vintage and new. I cook something or other nearly every day and I go down town to watch everyone getting up to stuff. I shop for books and it’s like a safari for skanky old paperbacks. I go to look at pictures in galleries and I try to get together everyone I know every now and then to have dinner and a night out.