Interview in Eclectica.

Yes, I've been interviewed. The interviewer is the great Jim Younger, author of the acclaimed High John The Conqueror. I've had the honour and pleasure of sharing the odd tipple with Jim on occasion. However, the interview was conducted in the utmost sobriety. Actually, I can't speak for Jim. But I was nowhere near a drink at the time.

My thanks to Jim. He came up with some great questions and managed to make me look considerably cleverer than I actually am.

The interview appeared in an online literary zine called Eclectica, and it was commissioned by Elizabeth Glixman, who is the interviews editor there. I hope the good folk at Eclectica won't object if I quote from their 'about Eclectica' page, just for those who may not be familiar with the site:

Eclectica was founded in October 1996 with the goal of providing a sterling quality literary magazine on the World Wide Web. We were not able to find a forum that would be the net equivalent (in terms of content) of Harper's, New Yorker, Granta, The Atlantic, and other publications providing quality material for the appetites of a wide variety of demanding readers. Although some of these magazines even had their own web-sites, they were conceived as companions to the print items rather than sites that stood completely on their own.

Thus Eclectica was born. The vision we shared was that of a magazine not bound by formula or genre, that harnessed technology to further the reading experience rather than for the sake of flashy gimmickry, and that was dynamic and interesting enough content-wise to keep readers coming back for more.

Ten years later, quality is still the sole criterion in our editorial process. If it is outstanding writing, then we want to share it with our ever growing, global readership. We provide broad categories for convenience's sake, but we love to get material that just doesn't fit into them. And while there are many, many online publications now that succeed, to greater or lesser degrees, in doing what we set out to do in 1996, we pride ourselves on being one of the longest-running and most consistent literary ezines on the web.