I'm not scoping you out, so chill. As a writer, I'm a professional people-watcher, and these places are about as good as anywhere. I mean, where else am I going to find all those millions of people who have no real lives whatsoever, and spend all their time in front of computers instead of getting out and interacting with honest-to-God human beings? You geek you. (As if I'm not.)

I am quick-witted, mercurial, and literary.

Inventing new worlds to conquer.

Addendum, autumn 2007: Just to make things tricky, I've headed back to university to pursue a degree or two in linguistics and ancient/mediaeval history. Nothing like having career prospects, is there? At least there's nothing like it to be found in this department.

My motto: I specialize in the impossible. For the absurd I charge extra.

Inventing new worlds to conquer.

I'm big, loud (once someone breaks the ice), weird, intimidatingly intelligent, and sometimes killingly funny. Also for some reason I have one eye to the left of my nose, and one to the right.

(a) LOTR, Tristram Shandy, a bit of Dickens, anything by Orwell or Twain, Swift, Chesterton. John Myers Myers' Silverlock is a grand game of 'Name That Tale'. Oh, and my own, of course. (b) Monty Python (fill in the blank). Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The masterworks of Mel Brooks, Blake Edwards, and Chuck Jones. Find the pattern, win a cigar. (c) Strictly the classics: Bach, Beethoven, Beatles, Dead Milkmen, that type of thing. (d) Chinese, Mexican, Italian. Preferably spicy, and preferably with ingredients that Gandhi would have sternly disapproved of.

Hope, imagination, brain juice (Coke, Pepsi or Cott, I'm brand-agnostic), an appreciative audience, and at least one Mac.

I can, however, do without the ability to count to six. Can you?

How to fill my social calendar with real live people, despite spending my working hours in the company of fictitious characters.

Up until sunrise on Saturday morning, immersed in my work, because I can't really afford to go out. (If I took the time off, I wouldn't have the money.)

Wouldn't you like to know, you pervert, you?

You can use a laugh, want to sound off, or desperately need to get knocked off your high horse.