I am only ever concerned that the writing is "true." I believe that literature — that art — can be not only inspirational but cathartic, and I believe that at times it can even be redemptive. The best writing can change you, or change the way you see the world; I can only hope that one day, perhaps my writing will come near to "making a difference" in however tiny a way.

Specifically concerning Where They Were Missed, I was very conscious that, as a Northern Irish writer, people might expect my book to be "about the Northern Irish Troubles." I was very concerned that the book was not "about" the Troubles at all: I wanted to write a book in which the Troubles were there in the way that the weather is there - they are a backdrop to events, they change people's plans and are a topic of conversation but they are not the focus nor the concern of the book.

Who would you say influenced you the most?

A couple of books that I think influenced Where They Were Missed are Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy. Elizabeth Bowen and W.B. Yeats are two of my absolute favorite writers, and, in terms of playwrights, Chekhov, Maeterlinck and Brian Friel have been really important.

But I think that most significant of all have been myths and folklore and fairytales - the idea of storytelling, and stories as a repository of cultural memory; the way we use stories to create and enforce and define who we are and where we come from. And of course many of the books I read as a child: Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House On The Prairie sequence, Richmal Crompton's Just William books, also Lorna Doone, Moonfleet, all that sort of thing.

Which aspects of the work that you put into the book did you find most difficult?

I found the bereavement and funeral passages of the novel difficult to write because they were so very sad. People often come up to me saying that those parts of the book had them crying their eyes out, and they ask me, "Why did you do it?" and my response is always, "I don't know — I just wrote the story, I wish it hadn't had to happen like that either ..."

Which did you enjoy most?

The best times were when the story and the characters took over - when I couldn't type fast enough to keep up, and it felt as if I was just the conduit: rather than writing the book, I was merely the means by which it was written. Those moments were rare, but utterly magical.