Marie asked Andrew Dickson:

Why the first chapter of a book is so important? Do you spend time to work it?

Andrew Dickson Thanks for the question. I guess for the obvious reason that it's the first thing the reader encounters, and if they don't like it, they're not going to read on! I thought long and hard about how best to open Worlds Elsewhere and tried about ten different options before choosing the final one, which was a description of a performance I saw by an Afghan company at the Globe theatre in London. It's tricky to get right. That said, every bit is tricky -- beginnings, middles, and ends. You have to trust your instinct sometimes.

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