Look how they treated Odysseus!

As I write this I note that my daughter is at yoga and my son is pounding the jogging machine. How can two generations be so different! It makes my heart glow - because they think too; or I think they do.

When Evie was very small she would prance around in the cottage singing, “Life is but a dream.”

Given that I write researched action thrillers – and much other stuff that requires specialized knowledge - people regularly ask me how I do my research – and, inevitably, do I use the web a lot? Well, what else do you say to an author? We’re a notoriously quirky lot, though I am told that painters are worse and that poets are the pits.

A frequent underlying assumption, by the way, is that, of course, I must prefer the research because writing is such hard, hard work. A sympathetic look sometimes follows, and occasionally a whiff of perfume and a hand on the arm from an attractive woman; but the latter is not guaranteed. Writing is a tough business.

Between you and me, I much prefer writing to research but, since I enjoy both greatly, I am content either way.

Where research is concerned, America is the land of specialization – to an extent which is frightening because it can (does) lead to gross ignorance outside one’s chosen field – but my personal orientation is to keep myself reasonably well informed on a general basis so as to have a core of knowledge which will enable me to identify the patterns that are frequently more important than the particular. No, I have no precise idea of what I mean by that but it’s my phrase of the day.

Whether that approach would work if I was a nuclear scientist or a heart surgeon is debatable, but it seems to work in my game. Also, the reality is that I don’t know what I need to know much of the time because the creative process is just not that orderly; it’s a branch of anarchy presided over by fickle Greek Gods; and look how they treated Odysseus!

Our secret is that fiction authors are faced with near infinite options - a truly scary situation if you pause to reflect upon it – which may be why publishers like to keep us shackled to a particular formula.

To quote one famous editor (he edited Frederick Forsyth) now deceased: “Victor, readers like predictability. Write Games Of The Hangman all over again, but just change a few names.”