Chris Wooding

I wanted to write an adventure in the old-fashioned way, something to which I could apply the adjective 'rollicking' and not feel embarrassed. But I've never liked my heroes to be too heroic, so they ended up being a bunch of criminals instead.

Steampunk has been hovering around for a long while, and it's never really caught on in a big way.

I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can.

I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.

I'm a graphic-novel guy. I can't handle the wait for monthly or bi-monthly comics; I need the story finished so I can buy the whole thing.

In my head, scenes are shot from certain angles; there are camera pans, all of that kind of stuff. Converting those visuals to comic format was mostly a matter of adapting them to the rhythm of paneling.

I do screen work, adult books, kids books and comic stuff, which gives me a pretty full plate. The problem is usually choosing which one I want to work on next.

There was a big horror boom in the '80s, and I liked its originality and what you could get away with.

'Malice' wasn't about horror to start with but an underground comic driven by the power of rumour. However, as nothing fuels a rumour like fear, I decided that it had to be a frightening comic.

I have a great affection for comics, and I think that people underrate comics as a genre.

We relate comics to the main super-heroes, but it's a great medium through which all sorts of stories are told.