What made you want to write when you were starting out?

First it was a simple desire to tell stories. I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.

What makes you want to write now?

I think that same story-telling impulse is at work, in addition to the love of creating pictures with words and getting inside a character’s mind

What preparation do you do before writing?

Not much really. Usually I can tell when an idea has reached critical mass in my mind and I’ll just explode if I don’t sit down and start…