Adam Foulds, author of The Truth About These Strange Times, answers our questions

What's the first book you remember reading?

I remember reading children's books about space and marine biology. I still remember the photos: the long scarf of a conger eel emerging from a crevice in a reef, its huge blunt jaws and teeth that were the more terrifying for being so tiny and so many. I remember beautiful portrait photographs of the planets. I remember one of the luminous mist of distant nebulae from which I struggled to infer the mind-defying distances involved. I much preferred pictures to words until quite late.

Where do you live? And why?

London. By birth and choice. London's so large and complicated that it takes a lot of learning. It would seem a waste of hard-won knowledge to move away. Also, I like its immediate sense of dynamism, of people from everywhere working to make their lives, a great combustion of human energy.

What's the greatest influence on your writing?

That's a very difficult question to try and answer. There's very little that isn't an influence in some way sooner or later. I suppose I come to understand my experience of the world by telling it back in my writing and therefore anything can be an influence. To answer the question in a different way, I'm guided by what I enjoy reading. I think I'm always trying to write a book that I know doesn't exist and that I myself would like to read.

Did you enjoy school? What is your most vivid memory of your school years?

School was fine. I was very well taught at senior school, getting much encouragement from the excellent English teachers who recur in other writers' biographies. I couldn't select a single most vivid memory from the 14 years or so.

Did you always want to be an author? If not, what did you originally want to be and when and why did you change your mind?

From the earliest age when the answer to that question wasn't a paratrooper or a ninja, I wanted to be scientist, a biologist. I began my GSCEs with that aim in mind. This changed suddenly a little later when an English teacher suggested I write a poem. Almost from that day I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and, in some sense, who I was.

Name your top five pieces of music.

This answer would have been different a few weeks ago and will be different again soon. I listen to music all the time, even whilst writing. Currently the list might be:

Debussy – Pelleas et Melisande
Oliver Knussen –Horn Concerto
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring (two pianos version)
Mozart – Piano Sonata in A Minor (K310)
Bach – Trio Sonatas for Organ

What were the first pieces of writing that you produced? e.g. short stories, school magazine etc.

The poem the English teacher suggested I try and write. It was in dialogue form, I remember, and would be deeply embarrassing to see again. Thereafter I wrote a huge number of poems and that same English teacher was kindly reading three or four a week for me outside class time.

Who do you most admire and why?

I'm not really big on admiring single people very much. I tend to admire the things they do – works they've produced, acts committed, things achieved – but this doesn't total up into a sort of hagiographic reverence. People, even the really good ones, seem a fairly variegated lot to me.

What jobs did you have before you started writing?

Shop assistant in various shops for quite a few years. Low-grade office work. Warehouse assistant. English teacher (briefly, abroad).

If your house were burning down, what would you save?

Manuscripts, laptop, violin. (Presuming there was no one else in there.)

How do you write each novel, i.e. do you block out the narrative first, take each page at a time, create the central character, build a cast of characters?

For The Truth About These Strange Times, it started with Howard, the central character. He attracted to him the people and situations that threw him into strongest relief. I wrote the narrative chronologically, beginning to end, with a couple of major revisions.

What is a typical writing day?

A few hours in the morning, a few hours in the afternoon, then occasional bedside notebook moments. From the outside, it must look very dull. From the inside, it can be more intense than anything else I know.

What do you do when you are not writing? How do you relax? What are your hobbies?

I play the violin. I socialise. I exercise. When I'm between things I'm writing, I tend to go for long walks to burn up enough energy to be able to sleep.

Have you started your next book? Can you tell us a little bit about it?

I have. I won't tell you about it, if you don't mind, beyond the fact that it's rather different from The Truth About These Strange Times, at least superficially: it is set in the nineteenth century.

What single thing might people be surprised to learn about you?

I've no idea. I'll look out for a sudden widening of the eyes in new people I meet from now on and will report back.