David Belbin's first novel has just been re-issued by Scholastic.

This means that ALL of his books are currently in print - a sure sign of a building talent.

1. Perhaps we can start off with some basics. What's your working routine while working on a novel.

On the first draft, I start every day at eleven (I'm not a morning person). The first half hour or so I revise the previous day's work. Then I usually stare at the walls for a while before doing 7-800 words. I take an hour and a half for lunch and recharge - read, shop, cycle, visit a friend, whatever - then I go back to the desk. I revise my morning's work, then keep writing until I've done about 2,000 words that day. I usually finish between 5 and 6 pm - earlier if it's going well. I do take short breaks. On difficult projects I do less words, but always set myself a target. Not all the words stay in - I revise endlessly and cut huge chunks between drafts.

2. Do you work in long-hand, or straight to screen. If long-hand, what type of pen and paper do you use; if straight to screen, what WP package?

Straight to screen with Clarisworks for the Mac. I only use long-hand for notes or when I'm away. You'd understand why if you saw my awful handwriting.

3. Do you ever show people your work in progress?

Not until I've finished a full draft that I'm reasonalby happy with. The only exception would be once or twice when I've written part of a book to try and persuade an editor to commission it. Otherwise, I show the rough draft to my partner and maybe a friend, for their opinion, then leave it a few weeks before rewriting and sending it to my editor.

4. Do you feel bad or good about a day's work according to the number of words written?

Not really. It's a rare day when I don't do nearly the amount of words I set out to do. But it's not the number, it's the quality. When a book's got off track and I can't see where its going, or when a character doesn't convince me, that's when I feel bad.

5. Do you listen to music while you work?

Not when I'm writing fiction. The fewer distractions the better.

6. Presumably, as a Scholastic author, writing for the Point Crime series, there are certain series guidelines which you are asked to write within. Without giving any secrets away, are you able to say anything about these. And do you enjoy writing series fiction?

I still have a note of the original brief I was given. It went "racy read, enclosed setting, 25-30,000 words, characters 16, 17 or 18" and there was some mention of Inspector Morse, as I recall. I offered them the idea for "Avenging Angel", which met none of those criteria, so, as a sop to what they wanted I threw together "Shoot The Teacher" as well. They commissioned both and STT is my best selling book.

I like the fact that most of my books sell well and I've been given the chance to do my own series. In "The Beat" I can develop a cast of characters and tackle subjects which would scare off publishers if I tried to cover them in a one-off book. What I don't like is the contempt with which series fiction is regarded, usually by people who haven't read the books. Also, you hardly ever get reviewed (this is a problem for all Young Adult authors, as ACHUKA has pointed out, but it's even worse for series authors) and that's unhealthy. There's often an assumption that you're writing some kind of mass produced pap, which is offensive when you respect your audience deeply and sweat over the work. But I'm making a living, so I wouldn't want to complain too much.

7. Your work for Scholastic (Losers, for instance) has quite a hardboiled, American style, compared with Dark Journey, your recent title in Mammoth's Suspense series. Does either of these styles come more naturally to you than the other?

The style of "The Beat" feels naturalistic when I'm writing and is nearer to that of my adult fiction. There's an American influence, sure - I've read loads of American literature - but the biggest influence on my style is undoubtedly Brian Moore, who's from Belfast, though he lives in California now.

In the one-off "Point Crime"s I'm aiming for a slightly younger audience and the style is more hyped up,sometimes even sensationalised. "Dark Journey" was written as a horror novel and I'm a little worried that some readers won't realise this. In my horror stories (there are two in Point Horror anthologies) I aim for a terser, more plain style, which seems to fit their darker mood.

8. Most of the characters in The Beat series are adults. In what sense are they teenage novels?

Readers like someone they can identify with in a book, so I usually include at least one teenage character who is given a point of view (eg Hannah in "Missing Person", Curt and Julie Wilder in "Losers"). I was worried about the characters being too old when I started the series. Notts Police won't recruit anyone under nineteen and a half, so there's a credibility issue if I made the officers younger than they are (two are 21, one's 22, one 23. The rest are older).

I've discovered that readers don't give a monkey's about their ages. The mail and comments I get about the series are more positive than for anything else I've done. So age matters less than most publishers think. Teenagers are going to be adults soon. They like to read about characters older than themselves.

9. Everyone knows that much so-called teenage fiction is actually read by the 10-14 age group. There isn't a great deal of genuine young adult fiction around. There is especially little of it coming from UK writers. All of which goes a long way to explaining the furore surrounding Junk. Is it your experience that publishers and editors have a problem with the older, genuinely teenage audience?

I think there's a problem with commercial viability which will only be solved when books can cross over between an adult and YA audience rather than between children's and YA, but that's rare in bookstores. Understandably, older teenagers don't want to read books that look like they're for kids. The new branch of WHSmith in Nottingham has a floor full of kids' stuff but the YA section is downstairs next to the adult section. That's the way it should be - better than shoving the occasional book like "Junk" in with the adult books so that parents can buy it, then try and forcefeed it to their kids to scare them off drug culture.

I'd really like to see "The Beat" put in the Crime section of bookstores rather than next to the Point Horrors - it has far more in common with those books. And I think that many adults other than librarians, teachers and the occasional critic would be glad to latch onto some of the best YA novels: engrossing, well written reads which are short enough to read in one session. That's the best way to read a novel if you can make the time.

10. I gather you've already signed up to do Beat 9 and Beat 10, so this is a series with a lot of life in it yet. Do you have any role models from the field of adult crime writers?

I met Evan Hunter earlier this year, which was a delight. Evan's the nearest to a role model I've got. He's seventy on the fifteenth of this month, so let me wish him "happy birthday" here. As Ed McBain, he's written forty 87th Precinct novels without any let-up in quality. They're the model for all Police Procedural novels and "The Beat" owes a huge debt tohim, as does "NYPD Blue" and many other police series. He's very prolific, which is often looked down on, yet he always writes superbly.

11. I very much enjoyed Dark Journey. It entertained me during a particularly protracted day-trip to France. It is an extremely exciting 'page-turner'. To what extent is the suspense element in a story like this dependent on your knowing in advance where the narrative is going?

That's a tricky one. I'm half way through a first draft at the moment (I should be writing it now), which is the stage where you've thrown a lot of stuff in the air and have to decide where it's going to land. I get nervous talking about this. Usually, the ending is decided by two thirds of the way through and the run in is fairly plain sailing, but you never know.

Many writers say that if they don't know where the narrative's going, neither will the reader, but I like to have a general idea. That said, the best twists usually come into your head as you're writing. With "Dark Journey", I got the basic idea on holiday and wrote the entire book as soon as I got home - too quickly, probably - then stuck it in a drawer for six months until I had a contract for it. The editor felt that the villain was too obvious and I had to do quite a lot of rewriting, adding an extra twist and a couple of cliff-hangers. But every book's different. There's no formula.

12. You gave up full-time teaching as soon as your first novel, The Foggiest, was accepted. Was this a good move?

At the time, no. YA fiction publishing was in recession at the turn of the decade. I sold several short stories, but my next three novels weren't published, which hurt. I knew that you learnt more from failure than success but it had already taken me five years to get published. I was doing well with literary short stories, so decided to focus on adult fiction instead. I'd just started an adult book when Point Crime came along and saved my skin. Two years later I was able to give up teaching altogether.

13. One of your most successful books is Shoot The Teacher. But it came out in America under a different title. Why was that?

In America, teachers do get shot- simple as that, so they called it "Deadly Secrets" without consulting me. In England, it was only called STT after WHSmith agreed to stock a book with that title. After the tragedy at Dunblane, the book's sales nose-dived. There was some talk of reissuing it with a new title, but that faded. The title's still sensitive - that's why STT isn't in the new anthology of my novels ("3 Degrees of Murder") when, logically, it should be.

14. Are all your titles published in America? What sort of a profile do you have there?

The first three Point Crimes came out and are still in print there. But an editor moved, or something, and they didn't take any more. I think the reason that they haven't taken off in the States is that there was little marketing and the covers (which they didn't change) were too sophisticated for the US market. So I have no profile there - which is annoying, because most of my favourite writers are American and I love visiting the States. It would be nice to have an excuse to go more often.

15. You have a book coming out next year from Scholastic—Love Lessons—which is not, I understand, a crime novel. When is it scheduled for publication, and can you give us a brief idea of what to expect?

February '98, in the new "Scholastic Press" imprint, which will hopefully get an adult cross-over market. It's about a fifteen year old girl who has an affair with her English teacher, who's 23. A sexual affair, not a crush. Teacher/pupil affairs are very common, but are usually swept under the carpet, and are never dealt with in YA fiction, which is precisely where they should be covered.

When I was researching the book, every woman I spoke to knew of someone at their old school who'd slept with one of their teachers. I sent the first version of the book out in the late eighties and publishers were scared of it. One said, 'we all loved it, but don't feel that all teenage girls are quite this obsessed by sex"! I don't know what planet they were from. Three years ago, my editor at Scholastic asked me if I had a cherished project that I'd like to do and I mentioned "Love Lessons". Bravely, they agreed to do it, and I wrote a completely new version, set during the year it was written: 94-5.

I think it's my best book. I don't know how it'll go down. There'll be some controversy, hopefully. And no, it isn't at all autobiographical.

16. Recently, in 'children's' fiction, crime writing has had to take a backseat in relation to horror and fantasy. If any work is going to help shift the emphasis back in the direction of crime and suspense, it's your own. Do you ever get at all evangelical about the genre you work in?

Yes. I think that crime fiction can cover the big subjects in a way that horror and fantasy can't. Crime novels can be closer to the "literary" novel, if they choose to be. Also, I think that YA fiction has hardly touched crime so far. Maybe publishers are put off by the Secret Seven/Nancy Drew/ Junior Detective stereotypes. Point Crime, aside, there aren't many writers working in the crime area: Lois Duncan, some-times; Robert Cormier, certainly (though I don't think of his books as genre fiction).

When I do interviews, I'm often accused of being somewhat unsavoury ("why should we make our youngsters read about bad things?" and similiarly patronising nonsense). The fact is that the biggest group committing crimes is 15-19 year olds. A third of the male adult population has a criminal record by the time they're thirty. I want a teenage audience to read imaginative fiction about crime and consider the consequences that irresponsible acts can have, on themselves as well as on others. You know, we read fiction for escape and for suspense, but we also read stories because we're trying to work out how to live our lives.