And what would happen if the characters found out?I've lately been pondering that a story is a strange kind of agreement between a writer and a reader. The writer creates a world that doesn't really exist and the reader agrees to believe in it for a while. Somewhere between those two things, something quite remarkable happens. People who never existed can make you laugh, frighten you, make you angry or leave you feeling strangely sad when you close the book. We all know they're fictional, and y

There’s something strange about the way people judge a book before they've even read it. I think it’s driven by a slightly awkward question sitting underneath the whole business of publishing. Now bef...

How much of the world are you actually experiencing, and how much are you simply assuming?I once read that we don't really see the world around us. We see the version of it that our brains have constr...

What if the forest knows more than we think it does?I love trees. Many people do, although most don't really think about them very much. People walk past them on the way to work, sit underneath them i...