1. Why do you write novels?

My father was a writer, so it never occurred to me not to write. When I was 11, I had to write something for school in three paragraphs. I did it and something clicked in me. While my teenage writing was poetry and songs, I wrote my first (awful) novel when I was 20 and some very pretentious short stories. After I moved to the US, I continued to write, had a couple of one-act plays performed, published the occasional short story. Write some unpublished novels, which were so-so, but all surface. Then I became crazily busy with music journalism and penning unauthorised quickie bios, so it was over a decade before I could think about getting back to fiction, which I’ve been writing ever since.

2. Who inspired you?

Depends on the period. My youth was counted out in grey-spined Penguin classics, and then American writers like Brautigan and Kesey. But I’m not a beat/hippie. I gradually moved towards writers who told stories with a solid voice. Chandler, for instance, de Bernieres, Joanne Harris. Still read all of them.

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

Probably a sense of place and time and how my characters fit into it. It’s hard to say, and I won’t analyse too much. After all, it’s all magic, isn’t it, and if you look too closely it might decide to go away.

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

Writing The Broken Token, my first published novel (another when it was accepted for publication). My closest friend, Thomas M Atkinson, is a far better writer than me, a man who can catch that kernel of truth in a character or story (try Tiki Man). This book was the first time I managed that, when it was real, even if it happened almost 300 years ago.

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

To tell good stories with characters that readers care about the way I do. After all, fiction is entertainment. If it can’t manage that, what’s the point? But, apart from that, telling some of the story of Leeds. My books here rum from 1730 to 1957, and I’ve tried to capture the place, and the essence of the people, in those different periods. That’s especially true with the Tom Harper novels. The 11th and final one comes out later this year, and it struck me I’ve told the story of a changing city but even more, a changing family, spread across three decades, from 1890 to 1920.

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

Short, simple answer. No. It’s what I do, it’s who I am.

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

Write. Don’t be deflected. Enjoy it. You’ll be able to use everything.

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

Reading, since you can’t be a writer unless you’re an avid reader. Music; I’m still a music journalist in a small way. My allotment, which is something I discovered in recent years, but which I love. It’s great for my mental health, and there’s a powerful sense of achievement in growing food.

9. How would your best friend describe you?

Probably as an asshole, but we’ve known each other a long time. We know where each other’s skeletons are buried.

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

What’s the first thing you ever published? It was 1977, maybe 78, in Cincinnati. I’d picked up the first Kate Bush album and Roy Harper’s Flashes From The Archives Of Oblivion at the import record shop, wrote reviews of them both and sent to The Cincinnati Entertain, which put them in print. No money changed hands either way. I’d cringe if I saw them now, I’m sure.

Writing novels has given me opportunities I could never have imagined. I've become the Writer-in-residence at Abbey House Museum, and I'm hugely proud of that. I had a play commissioned by Leeds Jazz Fest based on my 1950s novels. Both performances - which included live music - were sellouts. I've helped organise an exhibition about the 19th century Leeds women who worked towards the vote. That might be the most important thing, but I also sneaked Annabelle Harper in there, so she's been written into Leeds history. Last year, there was a murder-mystery-musical, very professionally staged, based on the first in my Chesterfield novels, The Crooked Spire. I've written a brief history of Sheepscar because it features in my books and there wasn't one.

It's incredible.