Why do people write books?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for years. On the face of it, tying yourself to a desk for months and months is crazy, especially when our world offers a never-ending cornucopia of delights. Is it the story that gets lodged in your brain and refuses to disappear like the line of a song you keep humming? Or is it a passion for words – their use and arrangement on paper – as it is for poets? I can more easily understand an artist who sees the world in terms of colour, aquamarine and ochre, or a musician who hears a sequence of notes which he embroiders into a symphonic poem, than I can an author.

For me, though, it’s always been about telling a story, which makes me a plotter not a pantser and for years I have told my stories, both funny…