Goodreads asked Gideon Burrows:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Gideon Burrows I'm going to be honest and admit that I get incredibly, awfully down when I don't have a project going on. I start to feel like I'm a faker, a pretend writer.

This is exactly how I was feeling once the brain tumour book was finished and I got up the next morning and said: well, what next? I had nothing. Absolutely nothing, and for me that's the worst thing.

A great friend who knows I'm into hot foods and chillies said, over lunch one day, why don't you write a book about chillies. (It was said in that... "You know what you should do, write about [insert THEIR favourite subject here]"

I dismissed it and was left to wallow in my self-doubt for a few more weeks before I just started writing something - the blurb for the back of the book, I think.

Just testing the idea. I hadn't taken it seriously, but at least I was doing something. And then I went to visit a chilli chocolate maker, and wrote up the experience. And then the book started to take shape in my mind. I was on a roll, I stopped feeling down, and off I went again.

This time, as the chilli book has come to a close, I've felt the creeping doubts again. So I'm already working on another project, hoping to be so itching to get into it, that there's no period between finishing chillies and being into the new one.

The new one is an inkling of an idea that I've been testing on myself, then writing in spare moments between chillies, and it's starting to roll out. I know it'll take all my confidence to hold it there and not give up, before it starts to really roll. I may not manage it.

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