My second published novel, Vertical Run , which became an international best-seller, was inspired by a spate of IRA bomb incidents involving one of the tenants in my office building. In A Perfect State , early in 1999. The yarn is another paranoid thriller. I do because they are fun. My chief recreations are reading, the opera, charity and wildlife preservation work, and a considerable amount of exotic travel - when abroad I usually can be found doing something imprudent involving carnivores.
Some writers use index cards, outlines or just let the story take over.
I start with character and situation, and with a vague sense of what's going to occur on the last few pages. What happens in between is as much of a surprise to me as it is to readers. At the end of Harlot's Ghost Norman Mailer wrote an essay that impressed me greatly. It was as if, he said, his characters had been living in his mind, waiting for a chance to come out and tell stories of which he himself was unaware. I myself have the same experience.