Authors' Spaces: Edward Hogan

Continuing Booktrust's series on authors and where they write. Today, award-winning author of The Hunger Trace, Edward Hogan...

I wrote my first book in eleven different bedrooms, in five different cities. Most of those rooms were - if you're a psychologist or a lettings agent - 'womb-like spaces that foster creativity'. To everyone else, they were the only tiny little box rooms I could afford.

This is my first writing room, which feels really very swish. On my desk you can see my notebooks, the index cards on which I write all the 'bits' of my novels, my research folders, and paperwork from the day job. I've taken down most of the photos and paintings of hawks and falcons that fuelled my second book, The Hunger Trace.

Lots of the ideas I have come from the aimless scribbling I do as soon as I wake up. The idea for my first book for teenagers came that way. Early morning is when all the crazy, disturbing, disreputable bits of my imagination seem to be most available. And to think I used to work the breakfast shift at a hotel.

You can also see the sombre-looking 'Penguin of Discouragement', which my girlfriend gave me for when I get stuck.

Outside the window is an old mission church built in the 1860s to minister to the poor of Brighton. I went to the local studies library and researched the house we rent - turns out it used to be home to the Sisters of Bethany, who helped out across the road.

My children - we have twins - are an inspiration and a joy. The double buggy is gigantic, and doesn't fit anywhere else in the house, so it stays in here with me, and I pray for lots of little interruptions.

On the sofa is a Hunger Trace cushion that my mum made when the book came out, and on the wall is a Polish film poster for the film Moonstruck, starring Cher. Against all odds and guidance it is one of my favourite films, and one day I hope to write a version set in Derbyshire. I feel fairly confident, somehow, that nobody is going to steal that idea.

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