GARY FRY

Well, it's been an interesting week. First, I saw the artwork for my forthcoming novel from PS, and it's very 'left-field' but fits perfectly with the book's mood and title. Can't wait till 'Canted Steps is announced. I've recently designed an advertisement campaign for the book, which Pete Crowther is going to use via PS Publishing. It's highly unusual, so we're doing it as an experiment. Keep an eye on http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/ for when it starts . . . Second, progress on my new novel continues. I've now done 17,000 words and the plot, such as it is, is beginning to creepy and crawl. I think I've cracked writing novels now, but I'm not about to blather on about my technique. It works for me, but may not for others. I'm taking two weeks off work in June to catch the opening of the World Cup (will watch every game, even between pointless teams [and I don't mean England, you sarky sod] ) and through the day I'll work...

So I've just finished one novel - started Boxing Day, wrote "the end" mid-March. It's called The Severance and it's my highly original zombie novel. Quite a departure in many ways for me, since it's got quite a lot of graphic stuff in it. I enjoyed doing this one a lot. And now I'm on to the next - a more insidious and ghostly piece called A Tale of Two . It's a novel set in both Stockholm and Seville, and deals with an idea I had in the wake of the credit crunch. It also expands on the way my shorter fiction - eg, 'Fragment of Life' - has turned rather enigmatic lately. I think it's very me . Non-derivative and governed entirely by intuition - or maybe dream-logic is a better description. Indeed, most of the ideas came to me during that strange wakeful period between sleep and being conscious. Which raises an issue that has been bugging me more recently. I can encapsulate this in a single question: must the author be wholly aware of the m...