Goodreads asked Mike Carey:

How do you get inspired to write?

Mike Carey It's just something I've always done. I think it's fair to say that I do it because I don't know how not to do it. But I didn't start earning my living from it until I was in my mid-thirties. Before that I was a teacher (and very briefly an accountant).

I like stories, and they're a big part of my life. Whenever an idea strikes me or I learn something new, I'm immediately turning it over in my mind to see how you could hang a story on it. So the inspiration could come out of anything, no matter how small or trivial. I'm working on a story at the moment that grew out of a line of poetry - I mean, somebody else's poetry. It's the line "cloistered in these living walls of jet" from John Donne's The Flea. I teased out an idea and then kept building on it. It's not about fleas any more...

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