1. He took this picture in Nepal immediately before being charged by the one horned Indian rhino staring into the lens. The following day he returned on an elephant, crossed the river, and was able to get much closer to the rhinos in relative safety. 2. He walked in the annual parade honoring local samurai warlord Takeda Shingen twice while living in Kofu, Japan, and has the silly pictures to prove it. 3. While playing football on waste ground by Manchester Oxford Rd. he found an unexploded World War II bomb (actually, probably an anti aircraft shell since it had no fins) which he and his idiot friends used as a goal post till finally calling the police. When they arrived, they cordoned off the area until the bomb squad had taken it away for demolition. 4. He worked on an early Bronze age B site just outside Jerusalem as an undergraduate. Here he is sitting in a Super Sherman discarded after the 6 day war. 5. He spent 18 months training to be a Catholic priest at Ushaw college, Durham where, for a short time, he shared his dorm room with an injured crow which sat on the end of his bed. 6. He continues to follow the fortunes of his home soccer club, Preston North End, who, in 1888 were the first football league champions, and who have been trying to get back into the top English division since 1961. 7. He attended the (now demolished) St. John Southworth RC High school in Preston, Lancashire, one of many state supported parochial schools in the largely working class, industrial town named after Tudor martyrs. Others included St. Thomas Moore, Edmund Campion and John Fisher. He was, he believes, one of only about 5 students who stayed in school beyond the age of 16, and the only one to go to university shortly after graduation, though other classmates went to college and university after a few years of work. 8. He has played guitar and piano for many years, and wishes he was better at both. In his late teens and early twenties he played in bands which did a few incredibly minor gigs before (quite rightly) disbanding. 9. He is the Russell Robinson Professor of Shakespeare at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and is the editor of the world’s premier scholarly journal dedicated to Renaissance drama in performance, Shakespeare Bulletin, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. 10. He has two posters in his office, one of Shakespeare, one signed by the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (including Joss Whedon and the late John Ritter). 11. While in the Royal Shakespeare Company storage unit and archive he recently held the skull used by David Tenant’s Hamlet and that reportedly used by David Garrick, Charles Kemble and Edmund Kean. 12. Despite moving to North Carolina he remains a fan of the Atlanta Braves and the Falcons, having lived in Georgia for nine years while teaching at the University of West Georgia and working as resident dramaturg at Georgia Shakespeare. 13. As an undergraduate at Manchester University he fenced (foil) for his school, if not especially well. He was also in a pistol club, both of which have been unexpectedly useful in a writing career that has demanded the capacity to write combat sequences. 14. He wrote 8 complete novels and submitted them to agents and publishers over a period of 20 years before having one (The Mask of Atreus) published. He figures he’s paid his dues… 15. As well as being a novelist and professor he is a practicing theatrical dramaturg and director. He wrote the first and only book on Shakespeare and practical dramaturgy (published by Palgrave, the parent company of which, bizarrely, also owns Tor who publishes his fantasy) and is working on a performance history of Julius Caesar. 16. Though dabbling in progressive rock in his early teens, he gravitated to punk, new wave and what became known as alternative rock in the late seventies and never looked back. His favorite band is still XTC and, on the demise of Atlanta rock station 99x he pretty much abandoned any attempt to keep up with contemporary music, the vast majority of which he finds dull or annoying. Next stop pipe, rocking chair and use of words like “whippersnapper.” 17. He enjoys woodworking, scale modeling, and painting in oil and water color, though he no longer seems to have time for any of these. 18. When writing first draft fiction, he shoots (usually successfully) for 2,500 words per morning. 19. He makes his own beer once or twice a year and has the best results with India Pale Ales which he likes strong and hoppy. 20. He signed with his agent Stacey Glick at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management 3 years and 2 books before landing his first sale. 21. For On the Fifth Day, he had to arrange for a local guide to take him into the Fontanelle underground cemetery where the bones of thousands of people killed by plague are stacked in tunnels carved from the rock. He contacted an organization of urban spelunkers and received the following e-mail: “I am Fulvio of Naples. I will lead you under the earth.” If you can’t get a novel out of that, you should probably hang it up. 22. Deborah’s descent from the Acrocorinth in The Mask of Atreus was partly inspired by a visit to the site after which he had to get his heavily pregnant wife all the way down on foot (there being no cabs) in blistering heat. Not smart. 23. Key situations, and even the helpful Westminster verger, in What Time Devours grew out of leading a student group to London and Stratford for a summer Shakespeare course. 24. The first chapters of Act of Will were first drafted in a computer room at Yale university twenty years before the book would finally see print. 25. He has a husky/German shepherd mix dog and 3 cats, all either from the pound or strays.