The most impressive thing about Vernon God Little, I found, was the narrative voice, which was first person- nothing special about that (although I am finding, more and more, that it's my favourite kind of narrative perspective and third person voice-of-god narrators are starting to bug me a little bit), but typically first-person narrators are somewhat obviously the voice of the author themselve ...

The first thing you should know is: I'm really scared of dying. Not of being dead. I'm sure that whatever's next, be it nothing (which, based on my experiences with unconciousness, I'm sure it will be), or anything else, I'll probably rapidly adjust, I'm good that way ("Only one red-hot poker in my earhole today, Satan? Ooh, lovely. How's the wife?"). But the run-up to being dead doesn't sound so ...

I kind of went off short stories, ah, about fifteen years ago, actually. I'm just a novel kind of guy, I think. I really like that feeling you get, when you finish a novel, like you've been transported somewhere, and you take a journey with the characters, and when it ends, you're sad it's over. That can really only come from spending some serious time with the characters, which only novels can do ...