Nick Lake is an editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s Books. He received his degree in English from Oxford University.

His first novel, Blood Ninja, was inspired by his interest in the Far East, and by the fact that he is secretly a vampire ninja himself. Nick lives with his wife in Oxfordshire. We asked him about the genesis of the novel, his writing tips and his Ninja skills.

Firstly, are you a bookgeek?

Yes, totally. Actually my wife and I just moved to a house in the countryside (with stairs and everything!), and one of the reasons – as absurd as it may sound – is that we were running out of room for books in our flat. (She’s an English teacher, and is just as much of a bookgeek.) People who come round tend to give us strange looks. There are books on nearly every surface and wall; it’s like something out of Dickens. I’m obsessed with every aspect of books – reading them, obviously, but also cover design and typography and page layout, which all appeal to the editor side of me. My mother, who’s a primary school teacher, taught me to read when I was two or three – before I can remember, anyway. I think if you learn to read at that sort of age it becomes more than just reading, it becomes part of how you know the world, or something. That sounds very pretentious. I guess books are in my blood – even more so because my mother also used to crave newspaper in pregnancy (it’s something in the ink, apparently) and so I was fed on type before I was even born.

I don’t think that’s unequivocally a good thing, I should say: the more steeped in stories you are, the less you can experience things as new and fresh – first kisses, marriage, that sort of thing. You’ve already lived it all through the characters in books. So I’m not one of those people who think books are essential to a person’s character; I have very well-adjusted friends who don’t read and who get their fix of storytelling through the cinema and even computer games. But books are certainly essential to ME. I couldn’t imagine living without them.

Do you have an audience in mind when writing?

No, not really. More just myself. For me, anyway, when I’m writing I’m really just making a book that I’d like to read, but which doesn’t exist. So no, I never think about the audience because to begin with it’s essentially just me.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given (and do you follow it?)

The best piece of advice I ever heard, and I can’t remember who gave it, was to imagine – when you think you’ve finished a book – that you’re going to die the next day. It’s a good trick, heuristic, whatever, to make you admit to yourself what’s wrong with it. Generally – and I know this from working as an editor too – the author knows, deep down, what’s wrong with the story. They just don’t want to face up to it because authors are just as lazy as anyone else.

Where do you write?

Everywhere – at my desk at work, over the lunchbreak, at my desk at home, on the train. Increasingly it’s on the train, because that’s where I spend three hours a day, three days a week, now that I’ve stupidly moved to the country to have more room for books (see above). I treated myself to a Macbook Air. I love it. It’s like a pet, I love it so much. There’s something about the tactile experience of brushed aluminium that really helps with writing.

Which authors (young adult or otherwise) do you find most inspiring as a writer?

Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami – and whatever the last thing I read happens to be.

How do you think your day job as a publisher has affected your approach to writing?

I don’t know really. I think it’s made me more aware of the market, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. It certainly hasn’t made any difference to how I approach the writing itself, I don’t think – other than maybe making it easier to edit the books because I’m so used to thinking about the structure of a novel in a certain way, and giving people notes on their books. But even then, no one can edit themselves – I need an editor to tell me what’s wrong with my stories; I don’t have the ability to be objective about them.

I have always wondered what I would write if I wasn’t aware of what was working in the market; whether I’d be coming up with something more original and interesting. But it’s pointless to speculate, because I am an editor and I can’t change that.

Was their any particular inspiration for the wonderful idea of combining ninjas with vampires?

Yes. I’m ashamed to say it all came from a joke*. I was talking to a fellow editor about what might make a good book for boys, and I suggested vampire ninjas as a ridiculous and obviously over-the-top idea. But instead of agreeing that it was silly, she said, “Oh, you should write that.” So I did.

* Not a very funny joke, I admit.

Can you give us a sneak preview in to what’s next for Taro and Hiro?

Oh, lot’s of violence and pain. Nothing is going to be easy for them. Taro WILL find his mother again. But that won’t necessarily end well, I fear… And of course, Lord Oda is [SPOILER] still alive. That’s not going to be good for our heroes.

What’s your best ninja skill?

I couldn’t possibly say. The greatest weapon is surprise.

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