I did a little eight-question interview with the CBC’s CanadaWrites program. Here’s a few of ’em:

6. Sharon Butala asks, “What do you think of the age-old notion that the best writing comes out of a life led outside the bourgeoisie, where so-called “rules” of normal middle-class life are deliberately broken and impulse is your guide, rather than duty or convention?”
Sounds self-indulgent to me. I’ve done great writing while working a bourgeois day job, while working a bohemian day job, while working no day job. I’ve also written bad stuff in all those contexts. The best writing comes from practice, discipline, insight and talent (in that order).

7. Lynn Coady asks, “Is there a poet, philosopher, musician, painter or any other type of artist outside the world of fiction who has inspired your work in a concrete way at some point or another? If so, who?”
Musicians especially—in totally irrational, impossible-to-describe ways. There’s just some music that puts me somewhere else. It’s like the best part of taking drugs. Some of those musicians are David Byrne, Tom Waits and Leo Kottke (there are others).

Hey, Brooklyn! I’ll be at WORD Books tonight at 7PM for the last New York stop on my Pirate Cinema tour. Tomorrow I’ll be in Philly at Indy Hall, before heading to Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston (whew!). Looking forward to seeing you there! Here’s the whole schedule — be there or be transdimensional!

Hey New Yorkers! I’ll be at New York Comic-Con today, speaking in the Author Spotlight on the Unbound Stage at 12 o’clock, and then signing books at the Tor Booth (#920) at 3PM. On Monday night, I’ll be at Brooklyn’s WORD books at 7PM, before heading to Philly, Bethesda, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston! I hope you’ll come out and say hi! Here’s the whole schedule.

The Bradford Telegraph and Argus covers Pirate Cinema today, thanks to David Barnett, who explains how Pirate Cinema came to be set in his paper’s town.

Mr Doctorow says he didn’t just pluck Bradford out of a hat – he’s visited the city several times and spent some time here in 2009 when the big UK science fiction convention, Eastercon, was held in the city.

Eastercon comes again to Bradford next year, and Doctorow is hoping to attend. But he also decided on Bradford because the city was mentioned in a report written by a web entrepreneur for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 2009 on digital inclusion, and how some communities – especially in post-industrial northern cities – were at risk from lack of web access.

He said: “The conclusion of the research was about the impact on certain communities in terms of not only their freedom of speech but also employment, education, access to health.