What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? One of my earliest memories is of my mother, bookless, trying to get me to sleep by recounting the story of Beowulf. Kind of a messed-up thing to tell a kid at bedtime, but I loved it.

What was the first book you read that made you decide to be a writer? In middle school, I wrote an ill-advised sequel to the famous (in America, anyway) short
story ‘The Lady Or The Tiger?’ The whole point of that story is that there is no answer to the question of the title, but I wrote one anyway. So that’s the story that inspired my first attempt at fiction. My teacher liked it so much that she made me read it in front of the entire class, which I thought was very cruel of her. If it led to pummelings in the schoolyard, I’ve blocked those memories out.

What’s your favourite first line in a book? ‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to
remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice,’ from One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Like gazillions of people around the world, I have that sentence memorised. To really appreciate its distinct awesomeness, and how it tosses the reader around like a beach ball, you have to take
it step by step.
‘Many years later . . . ’ Later than what?
‘ . . . as he faced the firing squad . . . ’ Whoa! Who is he? And why is he being
executed?
‘ . . . Colonel Aureliano Buendia . . . ’ What a name! Also ‘Colonel’: is this a court-
martial then? There’s really no time to think, though, because the rest of the sentence now comes barreling at you in a sudden rush, unlike the halting sub-clauses we’ve had so far, with a staggering punchline: ‘ . . . was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’ MIND BLOWN. Nobody else has written an opening
sentence like this, including Gabo himself, either before or since.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you?
I want to say something luminary (Catch-22, V, shit, even The Catcher In The Rye). But truth be told, it was probably The Hobbit. That book soon catapulted me into a decades-long obsession with The Lord Of The Rings. At bars in college, I would win beers by proclaiming I could draw the map of Middle-Earth on a napkin from memory, which is as nerdy and as romance-alienating as it sounds. But truthfully, The Hobbit has more charm.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day? Drink coffee. Then drink more coffee. Then maybe a bit more. Race to the bathroom. Pound on the door, if one of the kids is in there. Then retreat to the porch to write, wrapping a wool blanket around my knees in the winter, turning on the fan in the summer, occasionally lifting my eyes to watch the tail-less cat across the street
murderously stalking birds, and the semi-famous actor who lives three doors down run out to the waiting black SUV, double-parked and spewing exhaust in the street.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? Well, it depends. After a productive day, I bounce back into the house as a bright, witty,
engaging person. But on a day when every word turns into a cliché and the characters land as flat as a piece of paper, then I’m an irritable, self-absorbed, petulant ball of self-pity. On those days, mysteriously, my wife is always busy, busy, elsewhere.

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? I’d never burn books. In the 1984 vs Brave New World dystopian dichotomy, an evil Dann would definitely opt for the latter approach. Though I would update the tactics. Who needs soma when you have social media?

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist? My path to publication involved failing miserably as a writer for the first half of my adult life, then giving up entirely for the second half, then using a global pandemic as an
opportunity to try again. So I’m not sure that’s replicable, even if someone had the desire to do so. Donald Barthelme’s response to a similar question was to advise folks to study the entire history of Western philosophy, which seems pretty good.
West Heart Kill is published by Raven Books on Thursday 26 October.