The Word Cloud

Information

• Are you a ...?
  Published author
  
  What genre do you primarily write in?
  General fiction
  
  If you write in more than one area, what is your next most favoured genre?
  Other non-fiction
  
  Are your reading habits ...?
  Sophisticated
  
  Who is your favourite author(s)?
  Wordsworth/ Coleridge; probably Tolkein, though he's turned into Peter Jackson nowadays; um, I'll think of some more; yeah, here's one: Dion Fortune...
  And your all time favourite books? (You can change these at any time, by the way ...)
  Harry Potters (though a tough editor would have been useful from book 5 onwards); Cry The Beloved Country; Black Backed Penguin Classics (Homer, Virgil, Dante etc); um, maybe Captain Corelli; er, Pride and Prejudice; hey, I'm running out of words...
  What are your working habits when you write?
  Disciplined
  
  Are you the edit-every-sentence-ten-times type, or do you prefer to let rip?
  Ten times? Why so little?
  
  Your ultimate writing ambition?
  Good question - to be useful, I think - that is, to contribute to civilisation's ongoing conversation about life/death/universe - and maybe have a chuckle or two en route.
  Your worst habit?
  Waiting till I'm 60 before getting published - what a naughty boy!
  Your opinion on the books industry?
  It is a tough game, but everyone does their best
  
  Where do you write?
  About fifteen inches from my eyes.
  What else do you want Word Clouders to know? eg: do you have 9 cats / like paragliding / eat nothing but tinned fish / work in the bath / live in Kettering?
  Burnt out schoolteacher (= wounded hero); intercontinental rock star (well, school halls in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Leeds and the Democratic Republic of North Shields)...