People who greatly inspire my work

'Where do you get your ideas from?' is a question that people often ask me. Well here are some short clips taken from films and performances by people that have greatly moved me, inspired me, and heavily influenced my own writing. Of course, these are only fragments of much bigger productions. But I hope they will give you an idea of how and where I get my ideas and inspiration from. Beneath each one, I try to explain in what way the clip affected me: how I felt it related in some ways to my own life but more importantly, how it inspired me to write certain scenes or create certain characters in my books. Someone famous once said: 'Steal from the best and then make it your own.' I prefer to say that I 'Learn from the best and then make it my own.' I am heavily indebted to these extraordinarily talented musicians, actors, dancers, writers and directors who have influenced my books in so many ways. You can watch more from these artists and others who have inspired and influenced me on my channel.

SHIN SUZUMA - CONCERT PIANIST My lil' brother - aka Tiggy. I was fourteen when my little brother Tiggy was born. I had just left school and my mother was very busy so I brought him up during the first few years of his life. Therefore he felt much more like a son to me than a brother. I started teaching him the piano when he was only a few months old (see the photo page for evidence!) and I realised he was musically gifted when he was about a year old. I was teaching myself to play the Moonlight Sonata and every time I made a mistake, my brother started to cry. I started making mistakes on purpose and soon realised that he knew the piece so well from hearing me playing it that any wrong note would provoke the same reaction. He also would cry whenever my mother (who is tone deaf) tried singing him to sleep. Apart from that, he was a very easy baby and would rarely cry at all but a wrong note or a song sung off-key would really upset him! By the age of two he was playing pieces using both hands and by the time he was six he was getting too good for me to teach. So I found him the best piano teacher I could and he went on to win his first piano competition (competing against adults) just one year after starting formal lessons. He attended secondary school at the Chetham's School of Music, was an accompanist in the semi-finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, played Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto in the finals of the Chetham's Concerto Competition and went on to reach the finals of the Ryzard Bakst Memorial Competition. In his last year at Chetham's, he got into several of the UK's top music conservatoires, including the Royal College of Music. However, he chose to study music informatics at Sussex University where he performed Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with the University of Sussex Symphony Orchestra. He graduated with a first class degree, winning the School of Media, Film and Music prize for his end of year recital. Currently he is doing a Master of Music degree in performance piano at the Royal Academy of Music. He is the pride of my life and inspired my first book, A Note of Madness, about a teenage musical genius.

VASILY PETRENKO - CONDUCTOR My favourite conductor! Vasily hails from St Petersburg in Russia but now lives in Liverpool where he works as chief conductor for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He is also conductor of the National Youth Orchestra (and fancied by a lot of the girls there, I am told!) as well as having recently accepted the post as chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic. Vasily is a workaholic, passionate about music but also one of the most down-to-earth people I have ever met, despite his rapidly rising fame in the world of classical music. He conducts over 100 concerts a year - imagine, that's one concert almost every three days! When he is not conducting in front of a live audience, he is either rehearsing with the orchestra or recording CDs. As well as conducting regularly in his hometown of Liverpool, he tours the world and can often be found in concert at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London. I urge you to try to see him conduct at least once in your lifetime - he will change the way you think about classical music forever. One piece of advice though - try to get choir seats (at the back of the concert hall) if you possibly can - you will want to be facing him and not the orchestra for sheer entertainment value!

MICHAEL PROVINCE - VIOLINIST A former child and now teenage musical prodigy, Michael Province has performed for Oprah, appeared in a six-part TV documentary and performed in concerts around the world. In addition to his huge talent, he has a wonderful, exuberent personality, a love of mischief and never takes himself too seriously! Oh, and he also hates to practise!

FROM THE FILM: AMADEUS The Hours and Amadeus are undoubtedly my two favourite films. I first saw Amadeus when I was ten. I first saw The Hours when I was twenty-eight. I have watched both countless times since. I haven't seen any other films that even come close; I doubt I ever will. This is probably my favourite scene of all time from any film: Whilst plotting Mozart's death, the scheming Salieri helps a dying Mozart compose his own requiem mass. I had been a musical child before seeing Amadeus - started the violin at two, taught myself the piano later on. But it was this film that started my life-long love affair with classical music and I remember the day I went to see it (24 years ago!) as if it were yesterday. I had been invited by my mother's friend and I wasn't looking forward to it at all. I didn't want to go to see 'some boring film about a long-dead composer', but my mother thought it would be rude to cancel. Thank goodness she didn't, because that night I came out of the cinema a different person.

FROM THE FILM: THE HOURS "I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way those flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel - how it smells, how it feels, this thread, all our feelings, yours and mine. The history of who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up. Like it's all mixed up now." Ed Harris's short monologue is one that I identify with more than any other because it reflects exactly how I feel at the end of each book: even when it's been accepted by a super publishing house, even when it's out and being stocked on the shelves, even when I receive wonderful reader-mail, even when it wins prizes ... it's never quite enough. To quote Michael Cunningham, author of the book, The Hours: 'Any decent novelist suffers from the sense that even if the finished book turned out well, you had something greater in mind. You've been walking around with this idea in your head which is the book that contains everything you know and can imagine. The book is going to change people's consciousness, if not the actual world. But of course, even if the book does turn out really well, it's still just a book. And it's impossible not to feel disappointed in it. Artists fail. We all fail. It's never as good as you know it could be. That's part of what keeps us at it and part of what occasionally sends one of us out the window.' I hope I don't fall into the latter category but I think I oscillate to greater or lesser degrees between both camps. I always want more. The last book is good but the next one has to be even better. I win one award but now I've got to win another. You get past one hurdle and then there's another and then another. At the end of the day, you're striving to be the best - but that's unattainable, there is no 'best'. So you're reaching for the impossible. That can fuel your fire but also, ultimately, destroy you.

MATTHEW KOON - BALLET DANCER Billy Elliot the Musical and the talent of all the boys who've taken on the title role inspired the character of Louis, the main protagonist in Without Looking Back, who is a fantastic dancer. But this 'Billy' is without doubt my favourite dancers of all - Matchu, otherwise known as Matthew Koon, was just 15 when he took part in the competition above. I first met a pint-sized Matchu at the Stage Door of the Victoria Palace Theatre when he had just finished playing the part of Billy Elliot in the West End production aged just 12 and I hugged him so hard I almost lifted him off his feet! Now, at 18, he is training at the English National Ballet School, just round the corner from where I live. He is an intelligent, humble, hardworking and passionate young man blessed with a mamouth talent, an amazingly supportive family, and his dancing is more breathtaking than ever. I do believe he will be one of the leading ballet dancers of his generation, not just in this country, but throughout the world. And whenever I feel down, I just watch one of his performances and it fills me with joy.

BALLET BOYS - FROM 'BILLY ELLIOT, THE MUSICAL' The first three boys to share the part of Billy Elliot on Broadway: Kiril Kulish, David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik. They too blew me away with their talent and hard work and along with Matthew Koon, played a major part in the creation of the character of ballet boy, Louis, in Withoug Looking Back.