I was born in Southeast England, in 1968, and mostly brought up in a town full of retired colonels. My early memories largely consist of running around building sites and being able to spell ‘colonel’ at an unusually early age. Like most people of that sort of age, I took to making up imaginary friends to supplement my real ones. Unlike most people, I never quite stopped, and I’ve been writing about them in one form or another ever since.

Aside from writing books and pretending to be other people (which I suggest largely amount to the the same thing), I have, at various times, been obsessed with mathematics, classical piano music, kung-fu, particle physics and Sid Meier’s Civilisation (the original). Anything that explodes is fascinating, rockets are irresistible, but those are genetic things and thus Not My Fault. Other miscellany:

- Coffee: essential but sadly no longer a substitute for sleep.

- Being suddenly face to face with a shoal of Barracuda: Absolutely the best dread experience. I swear they teleport in the water. You look and there’s nothing. You look away. A minute later you look back and there they are. Hanging in the water with their sticking-out bottom jaw and their fangs and their baleful eyes, just looking at you. Dozens of them.

- Being on the top of a mountain at dawn: Exhilarating. I would like to wake up on the top of a mountain a lot more often.

- The Stone Forest under a full moon: Magnificent in daylight, other-worldly in moonlight.

The first time I went on holiday abroad, a war broke out. I’ve noticed this happens a lot. I have two small children: It’s like having one of those hand-held blender things permanently rammed into my brain, love them dearly as I do.

I now live in a different part of South-east England with my wife, said two small brain-blenderschildren and a desire for cats. I continue to pretend to be other people, most frequently A Responsible Parent(TM). Family life has rather curtailed any experiments in domestic rocketry, which is probably why dragons have such appeal. Much of my life (aside from the headline highlights, such as meeting wife-to-be, birth of first son etc.) has been lost to the mists of time and the haze of the Small Child Blender Effect. You never know – being bought beer at conventions might jog one or two memories loose