The question I dread most at readings is ‘Are you the same person as the other Kay Sexton?’

Fortunately I don’t get asked it very often because although the answer is obviously yes, that isn’t what people really want to ask. What they want to ask is, how does one person write those jolly, life-affirming allotment books with so much practical advice on growing food and also that other stuff (the stuff about death, destruction, peculiar sexual proclivities and desperate, damaged people doing insanely dangerous things)? The answer is – I don’t know.

So let’s deal with the facts

I do have an allotment. I have never shot a person. Yes, I can show you how to plant an asparagus bed or prune an apple tree, and yes, I have spent time with captive wolves, both legally and illegally owned. I do know a surprising amount about the world of sexual deviation (which I prefer to call variation) but how I know it is entirely my own business. I grow 70% of my own food.

I don’t know where the stories come from, but I know they won’t go away until I write them down. Sometimes I don’t write them down because I don’t want to share them with others. Sometimes I slam them onto the page simply to get them out of my head. I can think of the stories as evidence, or as a virus, or as apparent realness, what I can’t do is think of them as anything to do with me – that way madness lies.