Kevin Brooks

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

Petrol, crematorium, zoo, government, music, letters, trains, telephones, breakdown, words.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

A monkey reading a book, Robocop on a BMX bike, ALF, a Mexican bandit on a clockwork horse, a big hairy Columbian thing, ein Krampus, an armadillo with a six-gun, Mo Szylak, a papier mache tree kangaroo.

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Cheese on toast.

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

Assuming I’m allowed to include the dead and the fictional: Arthur Rimbaud, Lawrence Block, Billy the Kid, Tarzan, Richard Feynman, Mary Borden, and a woman I once saw singing and playing the piano in a hotel bar in Guadalajara.

Six things you can't live without ...

My wife, my dogs, my bonfire, books, pens, silence.

Five favourite words ...

Nothing, and, moment, blood, think.

Four places you'd run away to ...

Mexico, Dublin, Alaska, Marseilles.

Three books you've bought recently ...

Norman Mailer: A Double Life – J Michael Lennon
The Periodic Table – Primo Levi
Embers of War – Fredrik Logeval

Two things that make you rant ...

Radio 2 playing in doctor’s waiting rooms, dentists, hospitals. And on-train announcements.

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Dallying with a Hells Angel’s girlfriend is a really bad idea.