Thanks so much for the kind words! I’m just in the middle of writing more, and it’s very encouraging to know that my smooth Scots is appreciated!

One of the reasons why I love to have suggestions like that is because it tells me which characters people want to hear more about.

“Not much fun in Stalingrad, no.”

I went on a school exchange to Paris and fell fast asleep on the Metro. When I woke up I was completely confused and disorientated. I looked out of the window and we were coming into a station. The sign said “Stalingrad”. Check it out - it’s the name of a station. My friends tell me I screamed.

That was a sort of introduction to the next one, The Delivery Boy’s Tale. They’re connected weirdly, but I won’t say how!

Sorry, not an invention.

Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere would be nice. Smile benignly in a purple bubble and nobody can get to you. Ideal for Monday mornings.

Dice Company has totally changed my life over the last year. I now know about Angry Dooting and I have an aversion to soup.

A consensus always emerges about the voices fantasy races have. In your typical fantasy series, if the characters go to Ancient Greece everyone talks in booming ringing tones as if hailing a ship in a fog. If they go to Ancient Rome everyone is draped over sofas drawling “Darling, how wonderful.”

To stop drift, have a fixing phrase for each accent, ie, a phrase you can say to yourself which puts it right. I have loads. For Devon I’ve got “they’m thirty pence an ‘alf pound my dear.” For the barman Siward I’ve got “oh wow.”