How would you say that your mood reflects in your writing, for example the first shannow novel was written at a personally hard time in your life?

5) Tolkien found inspiration for his work from all round the world, how would you say that your surroundings have effected your writing and is there any particular landscape that has influenced you to create a tale, using it as centre stage?

My heritage is Scottish, and I first visited the highlands some twenty years ago. At around the same time I went to Iceland, and saw the fabled rainbow bridge. I like desolate landscapes, and I love mountains. I rock climbed in Wales when I was young, in the Triffyn range. I don't think you can feel the land from within a city. Out in the open, at night, with a small fire and the wind rippling the tent, you can almost hear the old memories whispering to you.

6) To what degree were you influenced by Tolkien? Are names such as "Anduin" (a river in Middle-Earth) and "Harad" (a land in the Middle-Earth) occuring in your books a bow towards JRR Tolkien?

Pretty much. Tolkien's work meant the world to me when I was young. I lived and breathed Lord of the Rings, desperate to be like Aragorn or Boromir. As a child I wasn't naturally tough. Bigger kids terrorised me, and I spent a lot of time running away and hiding from them. But I learned about the gifts bravery can supply, by reading Tolkien, Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, L Sprage de Camp, and many more. One day, when I was around twelve, I stopped running. After that life got easier. More painful, but easier.

7) How would you say that your mood reflects in your writing, for example the first shannow novel was written at a personally hard time in your life?

All of my novels come from a deep and personal place. There is nothing cynical in my writing. I believe in heroes, and I believe in what the old tales teach us. Too often we just see the sword fights and the action, and don't stop to look beyond, at the nature of heroism. Tolkien did. Think of it. The Ring is a symbol of the power of evil. The good guys are given a chance to use it against the enemy and win. They understand that to do that merely replaces one evil with another. The analogy went further. The closer the Ring got to Mordor, the more powerful its pull became. The more perilous the situation, the more likely we are to put aside thoughts of good and evil and just do what is deemed necessary. You think Blair would have butchered around 30,000 Iraqi civilians, if he'd understood that message? We need heroic role models now more than ever before. Someone once said that evil thrives when good men do nothing. Evil is thriving. We live in an age when 1000 murdered Iraqis a month gets barely a mention, while pages and pages of newsprint are devoted to a Swede managing a football team that loses a friendly.