It's a rather cold Saturday afternoon in East London, and the undead are all around me. Corpses in varying states of decay, blankly shuffle across the rain soaked pavement uttering the odd moan, some disgorging a black sticky liquid from the corner of their mouths which dribbles down blood stained clothes. In the corner, three schoolgirls dressed...

I am in Starbucks surrounded by cheerleaders! Not real cheerleaders you understand, just teenage girls dressed as cheerleaders – or more correctly 'Cheerios'. These young people are 'Gleeks', fans of the television programme 'Glee', and amidst the lattes and frappachinos of a small Surrey town, they are catching up on last night's episode. "We got...

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming novel for young adults

'Hell is this Maths Room. Not a Biblical Hell: for that you require penitential flames, fallen angels and a man with the head of a goat. Nor is it the claustrophobic Hell of the city; for that to work properly you really need a carcinogenic atmosphere to choke on, too many people with too little understanding of the concept of...