I'm still at it, actually - finished the first draft before Christmas, and now we're looking at re-writes. The whole thing has to be done ridiculously quickly, in just a few months, and interrupted by Christmas, by a tour to launch the paperback of Bloodtide and various other commitments. I was asked at the beginning of December and did more words per day than I ever had - forty thousand in three weeks. Complete madness and I was just a goner at the end - absolutely dazed. It was only possible because the whole thing had been thought out so well - characters, situations, drama, story, all there for me. I just had to pick up the characters and run with them.

I've used multiple first person narrative, as in Junk and Bloodtide, as it seemed the best way to show a side of things that a film can't do. It brought home to me very powerfully how much film "shows" rather than opens things up. Everything about character, motive, feelings, thoughts and so on is inferred. In this sense, film is a very minimalist form of writing - odd in a medium that uses up such vast amounts of resources in its production. I've come away with a better awareness of just how much the viewer does infer, without sometimes being aware of it. The process of writing down what a character might be thinking and feeling revealed just how carefully and accurately the screenplay was thought through. The only area that I've trouble bringing a character to, so to speak, is Dad trying to scab. Dramatically it's such a very important part of the film - the central point in many ways - but somehow the character on my pages didn't want to do it. But I've been in touch with Lee Hall, the script writer, who's revealed to me a bit of the story that ended up on the cutting room and I think I can see my way through, now.

I don't know how much it will influence me. I have read a number of screenplays before, including Bladerunner, which was visually an influence on Bloodtide. All I can say is, it made me want to have a go myself.

These types of books do suffer from booksellers not always knowing where to put them. Bloodtide is violent and vivid, with these big themes of love, revenge, hatred, passion and so on, and doesn't sit easily on shelves for children. It has actually been extremely well reviewed - I think I've had my best ever reviews for it - but of course people only buy hardbacks for very special reasons, so we must wait and see what the paperback does. Penguin have been very supportive and put a lot behind it, so I have high hopes for it.

One of the hopes I had for the book was that, being a fantasy, it might cross-over between teen and adult readers. The fantasy and Sci-fi shelves are the only ones where both younger and older people browse freely together. As for adult reviewers, none of them touched it, although it had a mention in the New fiction part of the Times this Saturday. I'm sure refusal to look at young people's books is just part of the general snottiness in the adult book world. People in children's books think its aimed just at them, but I think an awful lot of them are just snotty, full stop.

The award judges - well, I hate these sort of questions because I have to infer that my book deserved a shortlisting, and that's not up to me to judge. Whether Bloodtide is good enough to win or be shortlisted, I don't know - there has been some comment from various quarters that it should have. Over the years, as my books have wandered into more and more extreme areas, I've found that the Carnegie judges in particular have followed me all the way, often very much to my surprise. My work does tend to split committees - there are usually a few fervid fans, and a number of shrinking violets. Bloodtide is full of things to disapprove of, so maybe the shrinking violets won the day. To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure that that's entirely a bad thing. I want to do fiction that people disapprove of.

One of the best things anyone said about Junk was Nina Bawden, who said that it was just the sort of thing she would have hated her mother to catch her reading. Reaction from people who've read Junk has generally been good. Bloodtide is a book you either love or hate. I've actually had people who hated Junk but think Bloodtide is great. I've had people who are shocked by it, but love it for that very reason. Being a hardback, it's mainly been in schools and libraries, and I'm looking forward to getting some more feedback in the coming months. The big question on my mind at the moment is - shall I do Bloodtide 2 and 3? I'd like to hear from people. Writing a book like that is a huge commitment - it took me three years. There's plenty more where that come from, believe me.

Yes, Shagging April is now well underway. Sexual longing, lust, desire, love and often just plain friendship are all tied up together and it seems to me that no one has really dealt with the lust.

I have a couple on the go at the moment - Lady is out in the autumn, I hope. I'm just finishing off the final changes as soon as my busy Penguin editor gets back to me. Lady is an odd book. I've had this theme of animals running through my work and this one is a bit more Kafka-esque than before. It's also a comedy, which is new for me. The basic theme is a girl being turned into a dog, but a real dog - a sniffy, licky, shaggy bitch. She goes home - her parents don't recognise her, which is typical. She has to run away and hide. Soon she meets other dogs who try and convince her how much better a dog's life is. No responsibilities, no kids, no work. OK, you only live a few years, but during that time, the pavement is alive with scents, there is hot blood in between your teeth and every urge only has to be felt to be followed. The book runs through her dog-days with flash backs to her life as a girl - for instance, she comes on heat and runs off with a couple of dog-friends to the cemetery to do it doggy-style over and over, and recalls when she lost her virginity as a girl. She talks about her boyfriend, her girlfriends, her parents and so on, and at the end she has to make a decision as to whether be a dog or a girl.

The other one, still under way (working titles are Grope, Feel and Knobster - who knows?), is about boys. Boy meets girl books are always girlie books, but this one is definitely not. Deno (I'll have to change the name) is at the centre of that group of boys (everyone knows them) who are it at school. They might not be the cleverest, or the wittiest or the best, or even the best looking, but they are it, and it's very annoying. He's going out with the best looking girl at school, and she won't let him sleep with her. This drives him mad - she's had a boyfriend before who she slept with, why not him? Of course the answer is that he's such an arrogant idiot, but he's so sexy, she just can't help herself. There's another one of these boys having an affair with a teacher - sorry, had to put that one in - another going out with a girl who his mates think is unattractive ... and so on. I want it to be sexy and erotic, full of those teenage hormones, but at the same time to strike the genuine notes in terms of feelings and relationships. I'm finding it very hard, mainly I think, because it's not my usual kind of thing. I tried at first to make it very narrative-led, but it just doesn't work. It wants to be exciting, but more of a meander that a direct line. But it's getting through - I hope to have it done in a few months.

Yes, I agree. When I started writing I was told I was producing teenage fiction, but I soon realised that what people meant was fiction for people aged no older than fourteen, fifteen at the very outside. Books really written for true young adults are very rare indeed - which is such a pity, because it's just at that age that I feel books can really come into their own in terms of helping you define yourself, or even just entertaining you on a level that they never could be before. I suppose it's difficult - culture for teenagers is often brash and loud and colourful and dangerous, and that fits awkwardly into the bookshelves. Is it children's literature, or adults, or what?

I remember when Junk was made into a TV film, the production company said they'd like to make it into a movie but if they did that, it would be an eighteen and the audience it was aimed at wouldn't be able to see it. Well, it sounds like a good point at first, but actually it's unreal - of course kids of as young as fourteen get into cinemas to see movies. If they can't see them there, they get them out on video later on. So there's a real hypocrisy in our society about what young people can and can't see. I just think that a real literature for teenagers and up needs to ignore those conventions and go straight to the point of what we all know people that age really do know …

Ruth asked me years ago to do a story .. "and I'll do the pictures …" I tried and tried but just couldn't do it. In the end, The Birdman was an accident in this sense. My children were living in Germany and I sent them a story every week or so. Among those stories was The Birdman. A year or so later, Ruth again - for about the xth time - asked me if I could produce a story so I sent her some of the ones I'd done, and to my delight she picked this one. So I've done a picture book story but I still have no idea how to do a picture book story.

I took the attitude that I would follow Ruth's lead in how to edit the text. There were various bits and pieces she wanted drop, because she was putting them in the pictures. The idea of setting the story in an Italian carnival was hers after she'd seen one on holiday. The boy's red jacket, the man's mask, all these things are her ideas. In the original the Birdman has horns under his hat at the beginning and wings at the end in Jarvis's room - I didn't need to mention them as the pictures show them. The wings are still there, but the horns have changed into hair, giving just a feeling of how sinister the man is. It was a wonderful experience watching how Ruth works. I'm a big fan of hers, and I'm now wracking my brains how to get another one she'll be willing to do …

The whole thing needs to be more direct. I'm very pleased with how Penguin are dealing with Bloodtide - postcards in cinemas for example. I do think in general that teenage fiction needs to be detached somewhat from children's fiction and given it's own place in the sun. Music stores, magazines - all these areas are much neglected.

I don't think about the marketing side. I suppose my publishers do their best and I can't complain.

Audrey Adams from Andersen Press has been my editor since I began and I trust her judgement very much. She has the ability to judge a book with such clarity, not matter what form it takes.

Jane Nissen, at Hamish Hamilton. She's a picky editor who knows what she's doing. When she retires, I retire.

David Almond. Phillip Pullman. Anne Fine. Robert Swindells. Robert Cormier. Gillian Cross...

At that age I read very widely both above and below my age, so I would be enjoying Jacqueline Wilson, Brian Jacques, Thomas Harris, Stephen King. The list could be endless, there's so many fine writers about of all kinds.

I'd be reading Melvin Burgess, Malorie Blackman, Pete Johnson, Anne Fine, David Almond...

Also Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Jack London...

Film and TV influenced me a good deal in Bloodtide. The Alien series, the Terminator series. Films like Bladerunner, too - very important in my vision of the ruined city of the future. I do think a great deal about films. Another aspect of Bloodtide is that it's a love story, and I learned from The Night Porter that you can have a love story in the most unlikely of circumstances - even murderous ones. Favourite directors include Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, James Cameron (sometimes), Quentin Tarantino. There are a host of others, who I only know by their films.

Not at all - consciously at least. I like the cinema, especially British and Australian films. I think TV has lost a lot of its quality, its cutting edge, though Channel Four has made some good stuff for the big screen.

Well, I don't always use an internal voice. I am aware that both these devices have their different uses. From a personal point of view, Find it very easy to pick up a voice and use it to tell a story - it's a bit like doing an impersonation. It has an element of performance about it. Even though I write on my own of course, that appeals to me, and I just love the way the viewpoint shifts from place to place and person to person, when you use a number of different viewpoints. I think with the detached viewpoint, there is more a sense of conducting the story by the author - it feels as if one has more control over the reader, whereas with the first person, I feel that the reader can more easily judge for themselves. That might be an illusion, but if I feel that a character has something to powerful to say, I want to give them their own voice, partly to give them scope, and partly so that I can engage with them as a writer without having to judge them as I go along.

I'm not aware that my readers see things from a detached camera viewpoint: I hope my central characters tell the story. A number of my books are written in the first person. Perhaps I have misunderstood the question.

Well, I have two teenage boys, 13 and 15, and I don't think they spend all that much time "keeping in touch" with youth culture. I try to be open to anything that comes along in the right way at the right time. You never know what's going to work - you just have to keep your eyes open. It's a lot of fun finding interesting ideas and then taking them into a new context, and that's something that you can play around a lot with, in terms of what's called youth culture. On the other hand, I don't think books work terribly well if they try to capture what is currently fashionable - it's changed by the time you get there and anyhow, magazines and TV shows are better at illustrating such stuff. But there is a great deal of talent, often in very surprising places, and I try to be prepared to mercilessly pinch anything that strikes my fancy.

It is certainly necessary. I observe my grandchildren, and I have young contacts I can consult on aspects of youth culture which escape me, as they increasingly do. I don't even ask about EmineM or Pokemon because I don't want to know.

Crave is a strong word. I'm very proud to be writing for young adults for all sorts of reasons. Because it's all fairly new there are so many areas that haven't been touched. Who could resist it? Secondly, being an area that is perceived by the book establishment as being somehow "less" or not as important as real proper important literature for real proper important grown-up people allows you to mess about and not take life as seriously - always a good thing when working with the imagination. Having said that, I am producing books for older people, I know adults do often get a very great deal out of reading them, and of course it's always nice to have more people reading your work. One day, maybe, I'll do a truly adult book - something about bringing up teenage children or being a grandparent, if I ever live that long. Then I'll crave an adult readership.

I don't want an adult readership. See my answer to Q16.

I think I've said all I need to on that one... (see Melvin's answer to Q4)

I think the important ones fell in the sixties and seventies. I get mildly irritated when someone writes to my publisher because they've found the expression 'bugger off' in my book. Where have such people been these past thirty years?

I didn't regard Ghost as being about invisibility. [ACHUKA: Although the main character never becomes truly invisible, he does remain hidden from view for much of the book...] I thought of it as being about two things - one, using ghosts as imagery. What is a ghost? The idea of it being a memory really struck me the first time I heard it years ago, and the idea of loosing a part of yourself in old age - my uncle very recently died of a heart attack, after suffering from Alzheimer's for several years - struck me very powerfully. It's like someone loosing their personality, loosing "themselves," if you like. And it was about that "really big adventure" of children's fiction - death. Every since I wrote a book called An Angel for May, which was about depression (and is hopefully going to be turned into a film in just a few months) I've wanted to have a look at that subject, and try and make it into an exciting book - I hope this one is it. I don't believe in fairies, though. Oops! There goes another one.

Invisibility was a fantasy of mine when I was a boy. Also flying like Peter Pan. I suppose it was the wish for a means of escape. I suspect kids still fantasize this way, so I wrote about it.

As for Fairies, I believe in the Cottingley fairies: the clincher for me was when the snapshots were examined at NASA who said they couldn't have been faked. I suspect the photographer's 'confession' in old age was a bid finally to be left alone.

As far as Ghost is concerned, I hope it will help readers to understand something about the frailties of old age, and perhaps to see how it is possible to reach an acceptance of death - tricky thing to imagine when you're ten or so. Those themes are tied up in imagery of the ghost itself, which in itself is something to do with the idea of self. I hope the portrayal of Mr Alveston is sympathetic, and that it penetrates; but probably, the imagery of the ghost is the most important part of the book in getting these things across.

My own work apart, I think that the idea of how books move people, which they undoubtedly do, is a much more difficult question than it might seem. The effect stories can have on people is complicated and often mysterious. They can do so much - provide refuge, or insight, lead to understanding, provide channels for change or just pass a few hours - not to mention being boring, at their worst. Stories are a very deeply rooted part of our lives and culture, but more than that, I think they are a part of being human. All cultures and people's have stories. Myth and religion is born into stories, so God himself appears to people in narrative form, before he comes as an image. We relate our pasts, present and future to each other in story form. I dislike the romantic idea of the mysterious, which is often just an excuse to be obscure, but I do think stories can provide a spiritual side in our lives which is difficult to pin down. Educationally, of course, stories have always been used as an illustration, or as a way to lead people to understanding and insight, or to put across information and I'm sure novels will continue to be used like that. But I do think that one of the greatest strengths of novels is in deeper stylistic qualities, stylisitc qualitites, perhaps, which lead the reader to identify with people or events with which they may not previously have realised how much they have in common, or to see things in themselves they may not have known were there before, or even to sense elements of life they haven't even thought of. Although they are made up of words, I think stories can reveal things to us in a pre-verbal form - a thought or feeling before we find the words to frame it. When I think of the novels that had a big effect on me in the past, such as Catch-22, or Gormanghast, or the Norse myths, or The Wind in the Willows, I think I could describe what it is that fascinated and influenced me, but the concepts would be far removed from anything on the school curriculum.

I can only speak about my own experience. Books I read as a child/adolescent certainly opened windows for me on all sorts of worlds, including the world of adults. In fact, I find it impossible to imagine what would have become of me, what sort of person I would have grown up to be, if I hadn't been a reader. Certainly I wouldn't be a writer now.

It's my hope that my work will play a part in opening a window or two for some of today's young readers. That's why I'm not interested in attracting adult readers: closed windows in their lives usually stay closed, and some have minds to match.