Each of my novels has been a different proposition — from the comic detective story of Further Adventures to the ghost story If he Lived to the Edwardian historical drama of A Storm in the Blood. I admire Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut and hope I’ve learned a thing or two from each of them. Reading nonfiction, though, tends to stimulate my creative juices. That, and an incorrigible ambition to surprise myself and my readers.