Mark Billingham

In America, they have specialist mystery book stores with whole sections devoted to cat mysteries, golf mysteries, quilting mysteries. It's a hugely broad genre from the darkest noir to tales of a 19th-century vet who solves crimes, thanks to his talking cat.

After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap. That's a big one, the napping on demand!

I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13' written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yourself. You can't do it on your own, so you lean on Him.