1) The Etched City seems to be part Western, part post apocalyptic world blended in with mythical creatures with a hint of magic, what influenced you to write this novel?

Myths old and modern, including Westerns and gangster movies, along with decadent and symbolist writers like Huysmans and Lautréamont - I’m always keen on tales of ne’er-do-wells, buffoons and outsiders. Paradise Lost was a particular influence; some parts of the book are responses to my reading of that poem. Trips to central Australia and Morocco gave me the desert setting at the start. But it was also a case of the characters rocking up, out of where I’m not sure, and saying ‘Write about us!’ I had a really boring job, scanning old damaged photo negatives for a digital archive, and at night I just wanted to do something imaginative. So I started writing. 2) Coming from Australia have aboriginal influences aided in shaping your work and did the research that you conducted for your novel influence your own idea's on the stories development, if so how, for example the Crocodile baby was this more of an Egyptian thing or more of an influence from the Mermaid in the bottle created by a taxidermist in Victorian times?

In Aboriginal mythology you’ve got the Dreamtime, where the world is malleable, and all kinds of metamorphoses can happen. And even after the Dreamtime, the spirits aren’t confined to a separate otherworld; the actual world we live in is permeated by magic - that’s as I understand it. Those ideas have certainly played a part in shaping my work.

The crocodile baby came partially out of those Victorian sideshow freaks and fake freaks, and partially out of the research I did on birth anomalies. There was one stillborn infant with a terrifying face like a sort of screaming fish. He turned into the crocodile child in the book. Researching those very extreme birth defects made me think a lot about the spectrum of the irrational, the grotesque, the monstrous and the sublime - and the ridiculous - and our responses to those things, our ambiguous reactions of fear, fascination and even adoration. A couple of characters in the book orientate themselves towards the ‘normal’ and are trying to lead ‘correct’, civilised lives despite degrees of monstrous tendency in themselves. Other characters are more aware of themselves as monsters of one sort or another - criminal, misshapen, spiritual outsider. They accept it, even revel in it.

3) What sort of response have you had to The Etched Cities release?

I’ve felt very flattered by the response. It’s been very positive.

4) What did you do when you completed the tale in its original form?

I tried to sell it. This would have been some time in 2001, I think. I was told by a couple of agents that the book would be hard to sell, as they felt it didn’t really sit in any genre. I tried a couple of publishers, but they weren’t keen on it. Then another Australian writer, Geoff Maloney, put me onto Prime, a US independent publisher, who took it. The editor I had, Trent Jamieson, was excellent. I took about a year re-writing the book. In that re-write, the story became a bit more fantastical than it originally was. After it was published by Prime I got an agent, and he then sold it to Tor UK and Bantam in the US.

5) How would you define your work?

I think of The Etched City as a fantasy, speculative fiction, a romance in the old-fashioned sense of an exotic and high-coloured story, fabulist fiction, or a tall tale - any of those definitions would be right. A couple of other things I’ve written, shorter pieces, are more out-and-out surreal.

6) If someone was in a bookshop that you were in and considering your work against someone else’s, how would you persuade them to try yours over the other author?

Hypnosis!

7) How would you say that your work differs from other authors?

I have trouble with attempting that kind of ‘from the outside’ commentary on my own work. But I’ll try. I think there’s a stagey, smoke-and-mirrors quality in my work when I write fantasy. My fantasy environments don’t have maps or detailed histories; they’re like stage sets. I’m not heavily into world-building, and perhaps that’s slightly unusual for a fantasy author. Also, I like to write about the small-scale dramas rather than the larger ones. Events going on in the wider world are there in The Etched City, they’re part of the story, but they’re not the focus. There are other writers who do the same thing, of course, but I’m trying to think about myself in relation to the norms of the genre - if they still exist!

8) What influences you in your work?

Everything - I’m a sponge. Places, objects, conversations, history, current events, music, art, movies, books I’m reading, the weather… I have to be a bit careful with what I’m reading. It can seep into my work, especially if an author has a very distinctive style. I can’t read Damon Runyon, for example, when I’m writing, or I start writing in Runyonese.

9) Having become a published author if you could re-write someone else's novel in the same genre as yours, whose would it be and why?

Re-writing someone else’s work seems a slightly presumptuous thing to think about. I’d have to choose an unfinished book. If a fairy godmother waved a wand and gave me the necessary skill, I might try to finish or add chapters to Aubrey Beardsley’s Under the Hill, which was uncompleted when he died. It’s a sort of decadent, erotic fairytale, delightfully rude, written in a mood of frolicking whimsy and humour. It’s an antidote to angst.

10) When you sit down and write do you know how the story will end or do you just let the pen take you?

I write by following my characters, as though I’m watching a movie or listening to the radio. I try to interfere as little as possible. I usually have a rough notion of what’s going to happen further along, in terms of events and encounters that will take place, but I often don’t know the outcome of a scene until I’ve let the characters play it out. I like it when they surprise me.

11) What do you do to put yourself in the mood to write?

I’m usually in the mood; it’s a rare day that I don’t feel like writing at all. But I have to listen to music when I work. I listen to a lot of instrumentals and film soundtracks. Sometimes I get used to one album; when I put it on, my brain will go into writing mode. Then that album goes on constant replay for weeks or even months. I also like to go to the casino/mall/hotel complex here in Melbourne and sit on the mezzanine overlooking the foyer, which is a cavernous dark space with fountains, a laser light show, a dramatic soundtrack that constantly loops, and very comfortable couches. I like writing there.

12) What do you do to relax and who's books have you read recently?

I do pretty ordinary things to relax - TV, movies, art galleries, the gym, long walks, window shopping, reading of course. I learned to scuba dive recently and I definitely want to do some more of that. Recently I’ve read and enjoyed three literary fantasies: Monstruary by Julian Rios, The Book by Zoran Zivkovic, and Michael Cisco’s new novel The Tyrant. I’ve also been reading a biography of the gangster Ben Siegel, and re-reading This Craft of Verse, a transcript of six lectures by Borges. In front of me at the moment is the zany and delightful chapbook Common Ectoids of Arizona, written and illustrated by Stepan Chapman.

13) How do you respond to feedback and how do you respond to negative input?

I listen. I’m always interested in feedback, whether positive or negative, as long as it’s intelligent. If something I’ve written hasn’t worked for someone, I like to know why. Maybe it’s just a matter of their taste, but maybe they’ll point out a problem I hadn’t noticed. I think a perceptive and honest critic is one of a writer’s best friends.

14) What advise would you give to other would be authors?

Network. Being in touch with other writers can help with practical things like finding an agent.

15) Now that The Etched City is nearing it's publication date have you been able to pick it up and reread the finished product, or is there something in you that still wants to add bits or change others?

I haven’t reread it, because I’m working on other things, and I want to concentrate on them. I do tend to be a tinkerer, though. I find it hard to stop and say, “That’s enough, on to the next project.”

16) What is the next project that you are working on?

Black Dog is its working title. It’s essentially a mainstream book; there’s weirdness in it, but it’s real-world, suburban weirdness. I’ve also got pieces in three new or upcoming anthologies - the recently published Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, from Nightshade Books, and I’ll be in The Alsiso Project, from Elastic Press, and Leviathan 4, from The Ministry of Whimsy.