1. Why do you write novels?

The short answer is to make money. I earn my living by writing historical fiction and have done so since 2008, when I got my first book deal with Little, Brown. The advance from this major publisher was twice the annual salary I was then getting at The Times newspaper so I quit journalism and launched a new career as a novelist with the Outlaw Chronicles, which became a bestselling ten-novel medieval series about a gangster-ish Robin Hood and his loyal sidekick Alan Dale. I had wanted to write historical novels since university but drifted into journalism while I was travelling in Asia in the 1990s. After working as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in India, and briefly as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, I returned to London and took a job on Body & Soul, the health section of The Times. However, I was soon a bit bored, and I’d been working on my first Robin Hood novel in my spare time, so when the Little, Brown offer came along I grabbed it with both hands.

The long answer would involve something psychological about the need to tell stories. I believe that stories are as necessary to humans as food or sex or breathing. All societies tell stories and use them to transmit their culture to new generations. They are a package of important knowledge disguised as entertainment so they are easier to digest. Historical fiction particularly so. I fell in love with history through reading historical fiction. There is also, I think, a sort of genetic code to all stories, in their structure, and in the elements they must contain. They are not just a series of random events happening one after another. That process is called life. Stories contain meaning. Life, not so much.

2. Who inspired you?

When I was at Edinburgh University in the late 1980s, my then-girlfriend gave me a book by Bernard Cornwell about an English rifleman called Sharpe fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. I was hooked immediately and over the next decade I devoured everything Cornwell wrote. His best work, in my opinion, is the Warlord Chronicles a trilogy about King Arthur. I must had read the books five or six times – even writing this now, I am tempted to read them all again. Anyway, these books inspired me to write my own “muscular” historical fiction novels in a similar vein to the Master. The first book I ever wrote, Outlaw, I now think is so embarrassingly close in style to the Warlord Chronicles, it almost reads like fan fiction. Which I guess it is. I was also inspired by George Macdonald Fraser’s superb Flashman novels, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin 19th-century naval war novels, and John Le Carre’s spy works too, but Bernard Cornwell made me believe that I could actually do this.

3. What’s the essence of your style? The part, if removed, is not your voice anymore?

I have no idea what my style is. Probably Cornwell-esque, although after publishing 18 novels, ranging in period from the 8th-century Vikings to the 17th-century Restoration, my style has evolved (improved?) quite a bit from those early days. I do, however, have various rules for writing which I picked up over 15 years as a journalist and which I try to apply to own my work. One of them is: keep it simple. Flowery writing, writing just to show off all the fancy words you know, or because it demonstrates that you as a writer are “literary”, is often annoying to the reader. Story is paramount – at least in my genre – the reader wants to be entertained, to be swept along by a fast-moving narrative. He or she doesn’t want to have to stop and reach for a dictionary every five minutes. Likewise, don’t use too many adjectives. I am guilty of this occasionally myself but less is more when it comes to descriptive words. (Or rather as the old pedantic journalist in me would say, fewer is more.) My style, if I have one, might be called simple and straightforward. I don’t do a lot of description in my books. Read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, if you haven’t already, to see what greatness can be achieved with short, simple, adjective-free sentences and really tight plotting.

4. What was your dance-around-the-kitchen moment in writing?

When I got my first publishing deal in 2008. My dream had come true. I had achieved what I had wanted to do ever since I was a student in the 1980s. Being a historical fiction writer is in fact the only job I have ever really wanted to do. The years of journalism were just a stepping stone to becoming an author. I was teaching myself how to write – and, even more importantly, how to edit. I thank God for word processors. I write fast and badly – plenty of wrong turns, clichés, clunky sentences and typos. The novel is made by the editing process, in my case. I cannot imagine being a writer in the quill-and-ink days, when you’d have to think of the whole sentence, the whole paragraph, perhaps even have the whole novel in your head, before putting nib to parchment. It would take me several years to write just one novel with all the crossings out, the rewrites, then writing out a clean copy. Hooray for computers! Because of them, I can write two novels a year.

5. What do you want to accomplish in your writing career?

Mostly it’s about money. I want to make a large amount of money, enough so that I don’t have to worry about the mortgage, the bills or what might happen if I, or a family member, became sick. I know that sounds a bit crass. But the life of a full-time author is financially precarious. You get lean years and fat ones. But one good thing about this way of life is that books (particularly historical fiction novels) have a long shelf life. With e-books, which never go out of print, you can earn a trickle of income from a book many years after you wrote it. For example, I still receive a couple thousand pounds a year in royalties from Outlaw, the first of the Outlaw Chronicles, which was published fourteen years ago this summer. The paperback of that one is still in print, too. So I want to make a fortune, to give me security, but I definitely wouldn’t stop writing if I did. I probably would just write one book every year, or when I get into my sixties and seventies, maybe one book every two years. I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have a book on the go, and I will write till I can no longer type. But, frankly, I could do with slowing the pace a bit and having more time to travel and research.

6. Can you ever envisage not writing novels - running out of ideas or energy?

No. Not really. I love what I do. As I said above, I could see myself slowing the output a bit. But never stopping. I can’t imagine running out of ideas, either. Sometimes when I feel exhausted or burnt out (usually just after I have finished a novel, since the final few weeks are very intense) I worry that my creative well is dry and will stay dry. But it always comes back and, touch wood, I think it always will. One of the great strengths of writing about history is that the stories are already there for you. And I find, when the narrative crutch of history is taken away – for example, when I wrote my one fantasy novel, Gates of Stone, a couple of years ago – I am instinctively turning back to the history books to find plot lines I can use in my fiction. I feel a bit as if I am jinxing myself by saying that. Let’s just say I hope the creative well never runs dry. I have no idea what else I could do to make a living if it does.

7. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Don’t be daunted by the idea of writing a novel. It’s actually quite easy. For years I prevaricated, too busy with journalism. And in my spare time I usually went drinking. (Quick note on drinking. I can’t write at all when I’ve had a drink. I sometimes have some good ideas when I’m drunk, but I can only make a note of them and hope they still look good the next morning.) Anyway, listen up, young Angus: You get yourself an idea, a good, strong, original idea, then you sit down and start typing. And you don’t give up. At first it will be terrible – but hooray for word processors. Keep going until you have finished your novel. Then work on it until it is perfect before you show it to anybody. If you show it prematurely, you may get criticism. Boy, are you going to hate that! It might even throw you off your stride. So don’t show it till you think it is perfect – it won’t be – but editors can help fix it. If nobody wants to publish it, and they probably won’t, put it in a drawer, and start writing the next novel. Repeat. That novel in the drawer is not waste of time, by the way. You will pull it out years later and say, “Hey, that’s not all that bad”. Then you rewrite that and make millions from it. Maybe. The more novels you write, the better you will become at your craft. The more novels you write, the more money you will make. Don’t give up. Don’t go to the pub. Sit down and write the next novel.

8. Away from writing, what are your passions, and what do they mean to you?

I’m not sure I have any other passions. I hate the word “passion” anyway. Why does everyone have to be passionate about everything these days? I love my family; I like playing golf and drinking red wine, and reading military history books. I like to cook – I do all the cooking for my family. I used to like travelling, and would like to do more of it if I had more time. I enjoy the company of my friends. But I’m not really a passionate guy. Too many years of repression at English boarding schools, I suspect. I dislike people who claim to have wild emotions about humdrum things. And it’s also such a horrible cliché to say you are passionate about a thing when what you actually mean is that you enjoy it. I love a few people, and they know it, and I like doing some ordinary things. That’s it, really.

9. How would your best friends describe you?

Probably as rather a difficult customer. I hope they think I am fun. But I can sometimes be pretty rude. I don’t have a lot of time for people who don’t respect books. Sometimes people say to me: “Oh, I don’t read fiction. What’s the point when it’s all made up nonsense?” Now, in a sane world, the correct response to these people should be to punch them in the mouth, and keep punching till they go away. Or die. Either is fine by me. But apparently this is rather frowned on in polite society. So I tend to be rude to them. “Oh, you don’t read?” I say. “Well, you mustn’t be ashamed of that. A lot of people, even adults, still have trouble with reading. It doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. I blame our education system.”  . . . “Oh, you say you don’t read fiction. Not to worry, not everyone has the intelligence and imagination to explore new worlds. You mustn’t beat yourself up about it. I expect you are good at, um . . . accountancy, was it?. . . At least you learnt how to do sums. Well done you!”

10. What’s a significant question to ask you, that no other interview has to date, and what’s the answer, only for New2theScene?

Which of your characters would you most like to have a sexual relationship with? The answer is Torfinna Hildarsdottir, the shield maiden from my Fire Born series of Viking novels. She is impetuous, rude, spiky and occasionally violent; but behind her tough shell she is touchingly vulnerable. She is physically very attractive (to me): a slim, very fit, redhead with large green eyes. And she is single. I have a serious crush on her and don’t want to give her a boyfriend or husband in my novels. I want her all to myself. And, since she is fictional, and created on the page by me, my wife can’t complain.