Any writing rituals? “I always put Pandora on to the Billie Holiday station when I start a writing project.”

What’s the oddest thing you own? “Something called a NoseFrida, a Swedish device that allows me to suck snot from my baby’s nose using my mouth.”

When I’m curious about writers I haven’t read yet, I prefer to read their short fiction first, even if their novels are more well-known. In a collection, it’s the disparity as well as the similarity in the stories that’s interesting. It can also tell you a lot about the writer’s skills, especially if it’s the first time they were published. You can see them stretching and…

What’s the oddest thing you own? A ceramic figure of a winged angel kneeling in prayer, chipped and scuffed from over a hundred battered earthly years. She came to me from a tiny chapel atop a hill on the side of a volcano in the Mediterranean. She’s currently guarding my basil from evil; somehow, the weeds are getting by her, though.

Which book do you feel obligated to read next? I rarely feel obliged to read books at the moment. Either I want to read them, or I don’t read them! This might change soon, as I’m hopefully joining an MA Creative Writing course and will have to cope with set texts. At the moment I’ve finally got round to reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley though.