The first trade of Locke & Key didn't grab me - slow burn start, but oh my god, by book 2 I was hooked. It's brilliant, such smart, dark, humane storytelling. Surprising, ingenious, felt sick with jealousy about the sheer number of ideas per page, but perfectly carried off with great story and wonderful characters.…

Table Mountain is pretty damn awesome. Cape Town in general is crazy beautiful, but not without huge social problems.

I got to meet Max Barry in Melbourne when I was over there two weeks ago - he's awesome. Lexicon was my favourite book I read last year.

Flying Spaghetti Monster.

To elaborate on that: my friend Diane Awerbuck (her book of short stories, Cabin Fever is incredible, as is her novel Home Remedies) has her PhD in narratives of trauma. How we talk to ourselves about what happened to us, what makes some people more resilient, others able to forgive, or locks others in the inability…

The pesky problem of having magical animals in every scene!

And of course he does have visions too, the House is telling him to do it, but, like most serial killers, he goes along with it because he gets off on it. It's the head-trip, the power-play.

Thanks for reading it!

Thank you. I know it's hard to read. It's supposed to be. I WANTED you to have to put it down and fortify yourself with a cup of tea or a double scotch, because real violence is shocking, it is upsetting, it's devastating. It's easy for us to forget that when the body count on TV and movies racks up the meaningless…

Oh noes! I had a really long answer to this, but it seems to have vanished.

It's in development. These things take years, usually. Unless you know someone who has $30 million spare?

I didn't want to bring sex into at all but my research showed that most serial killers have some kind of sexual motivation. It's often about impotence, whether actual sexual impotence, or feeling impotent in your life.

I write the entire first draft and then go back and revise and in this case, move chapters around to iron out plot holes, ensure everything's consistent and to keep the narrative tightening like a noose.

Thanks! I tried so very, very hard to make sure it was absolutely consistent. Hence the crazy murder wall to make sure there were no plot holes (please FSM).

It was informed by their personalities. I let the characters guide me (as iffy as that may sound - there's a subconscious magic to writing) and that's informed by who they are, what they've been through.

Hi Michael,

And in essay question of the day... ;)

I started with the three timelines on little notecards (using Scrivener's corkboard feature and just printing that out was great!) but it got so dense and complicated, not just keeping track of the deaths, but the movement of the totem objects, I had to add the strings.

Hi Dr Emilio Lizardo,

Hi RonQuixote,