According to Oxford novelist Michael Paul Amos, planning is the key to successfully writing a book. "My sitting room is often strewn with cards that basically contain the plot and structure of my latest book. I write notes on each one and colour code them according to which character I am writing about."

He added: "I am also often overheard in my study talking in strange voices — that’s because I find that giving each character their own voice and accent really makes them come alive."

Michael’s system seems to be working well as he has just published his second novel, The Rocktastic Corduroy Peach, the tale of a group of dysfunctional men in an Oxford amateur indie-rock band. There is guitarist and hot-dog salesman Marcus, suave drummer Dermot, competing for the affections of gorgeous Oxford student Rose, and insufferable singer Danny-boy, trying to manoeuvre Marcus out of the band. The book explores the end of youth and the tug of war between impossible dreams and life’s real priorities: love, friendship and honesty.

Michael, whose real name is Thorn, has a day job with Oxford University and works in IT. He said: "In writing the story, I drew on my extensive experience of musical failure over the last 25 years. My first science-fiction novel, Homeland, was published in 2006, and that was a partly satirical but mostly daft take on the heady cocktail of paranoia and reckless consumerism eroding society. I am working on a sequel."

Like most writers, he hopes that at some point he will be able to quit the day job and write full time. He said: "One of the things that authors don’t realise is that there are three stages to writing a novel. The first is to write it, and that in itself is a big task, and if you have a day job and a family it’s very difficult. Most people think that that’s the hard work over, but that’s not the case at all.

"If you are not an established author and are writing from scratch, you then have to sell your book to somebody, and in the UK you can no longer approach a publisher unless you have an agent. The third thing to remember is that a publisher will only do so much for you, so you need time to do your own PR and promotion."

Michael’s books are published by Samhain, an American publishing company which publishes authors' works as e-books first. Michael added: ""I didn’t have much luck finding a publisher at first, and came across Samhain in a magazine when they were looking for new authors. They loved my book, although I did have to re-write about a quarter of it.

"As e-books, my novels have done really well, but I don’t think the e-book culture has really taken hold over here yet. It’s environmentally sound to have e-books, but people love the smell and feel of a book, so I am not sure it will ever really catch on. Everything about reading a book is physical."

Michael describes his writing as "organised daydreaming".

"I get home, play with the kids, have dinner and then while everyone else watches TV, I go and write. I lose myself in it — I have been a daydreamer all my life and now work four days a week and write for one day. I started writing at a time of my life when I was off sick from work and writing was my escape. It was a very cathartic process and I would urge anyone to write. I write my novels on filing cards first in bullet-point format, so that I know what each character is going to do. Sometimes the characters do start behaving in a different way as the story develops, so you have to allow for that. As a writer, you are also an actor. It’s difficult to detach yourself from the book and I do find that I really get into the heads of my characters.

"My books are very different, as Homeland is a science-fiction novel. I think that as a genre this is often very under-rated and people seem to take a dim view of it, but. My books are about people and just because one of them is a science-fiction novel, it doesn’t mean it is any less of a story."

Michael added that everyone interprets his books differently and many are convinced that some of the characters are based on him. "My characters are all based on little bits of lots of people whom I know, including me. Friends often think they recognise themselves in the characters I create, but I think that is great — everyone takes something different away with them when they read a book and that’s how it should be."

He is now working on a sequel to Homeland, called The Everlasting Beyond of Eternal Happiness, as well as the autobiography of the Transylvanian Count Baron Franz Nopsca, who was a spy during the First World War and the head of a geological survey.

He added: "I am a great planner, so I always have another writing project planned. I am also writing about the discovery of dinosaurs in Oxfordshire in the 1820s and 1830s and the people who discovered them. It’s fascinating stuff."

 The Rocktastic Corduroy Peach is published by Samhain at £13.