1 – Can you start by telling us a little about your current book? The Darkest Sin is a historical thriller set in Renaissance Florence. It features Cesare Aldo, an officer of the most feared criminal court in the city. But Aldo is also a gay man at a time and place where that puts him on the wrong side of the law. In the novel Aldo investigates reports of intruders at a Florentine convent. Inside he discovers the naked corpse of a man, stabbed dozens of times and bathed in blood. All the evidence suggests one of the nuns is a killer. 2 – Are you a plotter or a panster? I write faster if I spend time on research and plot ahead of starting a first draft. I need to know my ending before I start, plus know my characters and their world. Everything else I tend to discover along the way, like a person walking through darkness with a flashlight 3 – Savoury or sweet? Sweet, but I can recommend chocolate with maple syrup cured bacon so that hits both. 4 – Three books to a desert Island. Go! My Side of the River by Ted Reynolds. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Both are non-fiction books about setting out on new endeavours alone, which seems appropriate. My third choice would be The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox. I loved her last novel Wake, and The Absolute Book is more than 600 pages long so it’d keep me going a while. 5 – Star Wars or Star Trek? A year ago I would have said Trek has more variety, but shows like The Mandalorian are adding some fresh angles to the familiar so… Star Wars. 6 – If you could have any superpower, what would it be? The power of suggestion. 7 – Music or Silence when writing? Music, but no lyrics. I write to film soundtracks for the most part. If I find the right piece, I’ll listen to it on rotate the entire time I’m writing a novel. It gets to the point where I wake up with that playing in my head, the music so familiar I don’t even need to turn it on to hear it anymore. The Darkest Sin was written to Howard Shore’s score for the film Doubt, but sometimes I switched to The Personal History of David Copperfield score by Christopher Willis when I needed to add some pace. For my current project I am writing to the score of The Unforgivable by Hans Zimmer and David Fleming – excellently moody music. 8 – If you could live anywhere in the world, and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose? New Zealand, where I was born and raised. No contest. 9 - Your favourite karaoke song? Never sung karaoke but would try I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man by Prince. 10 – One piece of advice to an aspiring writer? I lead the creative writing programmes at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, so one piece of advice really isn’t enough. But you asked, so… Read more - the solution to almost any writing problem can usually be found in a book. 11 – You win £1 million, but you must give half to charity. Which charity do you chose, and what do you do with the rest of the money? Cancer Research. That bastard disease has claimed too many family and friends. 12 – Horror films, yes or no? If so, any favourites? Yes! Too many favourites to list them all but original flavour A Nightmare on Elm Street is a good place to start. I even wrote a Freddy novel, Suffer the Children – long out of print, alas. 13 - What are you currently working on? The third Cesare Aldo novel which has the working title of Ordeal by Fire.