Irish writing is so strong that it can feel like the country has all been covered, but in fact, there are so many gaps. The small west of Ireland cities and the working classes there have almost never appeared in Irish literature, simply because those communities were never in the way of producing books.

I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.

In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'

What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it's a far harder form.

That was it - I lost my job... I was very discouraged. I wanted to be in defense work... I'm an American, and I have nothin' to do with Japan, and so it's sort of an insult to me.

Suits are looked at more now as a business thing which is kind of a shame. If you're not wearing it just for work, you should try and trick it up a bit.

I'd quit my job at a production company and was like, 'I'm going to be a writer...' I became a temp, and it was the mid-nineties, when there was the Internet boom, and the normal group of graduates ready to fill in didn't exist.

There's sacrifice involved. Either you're going to work a lot and not get to spend time with your kid, or you're going to spend a ton of time with your kid, and you're sacrificing your career.