Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland.
My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere.
For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster.
Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments.
I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs.
Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode.
It's been noted that writing about the production of art is a masquerade or metaphor for writing about writing. This may be true, there are similarities - both the verbal and the visual represent the thing or the concept.
I was brought up in the north of England, which is probably no rougher than anywhere else, but I remember as a child being kind of mesmerized by girls fighting on the playground.
I have ideas. I hear voices. Words accumulate. It's still an overriding impulse. And I'm self-employed, which means I have to be sensible and motivated about paying the bills.
Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames.
I was the feral, mud-bathing, tree-climbing variety of child. Why would I want to read about pirates when I could build a raft and terrorise sheep along the riverbanks?
Revisiting much-loved childhood novels is never easy.
When you are a kid, a wolf is an amazing sight, so sumptuous. I sort of knew these were splendid creatures, that I was not going to find them outside roaming around. It was like a dog, but not a dog. It was incredible, a god!
Wonderful characters rotate around and through bookshops on a daily basis, competing with and possibly even triumphing over fiction when it comes to entertainment, strangeness and inspiration.
Writing, and its theatre of operation, is better than working shifts packing frozen sausages; that's all I need to think about if I'm having difficulties.
