FAQ

No: he is Iain Menzies Banks, born February 16th 1954. I am Ian Banks, born February 14th 1970. He is from Scotland, I am from Tasmania, almost diagonally opposite on the globe. There are slight differences in the spelling of our names, but that’s about it really.

Ok, then you must be…

There are sundry other Ia(i)n Banks about the place: one is a doctor who has a column in a magazine; another is an animator; another is a lecturer in film studies; still another is an IT specialist; yet another is an anaesthetist… and I am none of them, either. However, it does seem apparent that this is a name synonymous with talented, highly skilled individuals. (Note to the grammatically challenged: this is a joke.)

Why do you write under a pseudonym?

When I put up my first website (don’t go looking, ‘cos it’s gone), I got a lot of emails from people who thought I was that other guy. He has since felt the pressure (note: another joke) and created his own site. For whatever reason, some people thought that I was him, despite me calling the page “The Other Ian Banks”. So, to avoid the both of us getting hate mail, I decided to create a pseudonym.

Why “E. N. Taylor”?

The “E. N.” is for Ian and “Taylor” is my wife’s maiden name.

How come you hardly ever update your news column?

When things happen to me that involve my writing, I put it on my news page. This includes things like sales, or the appearance of a piece of my writing somewhere. It is not a blog: I have little enough time to write my fiction, let alone record the minutiae of my daily life. Besides, I’m not really so interesting that I think I should record the minutiae of my daily life.

How come this is the last question?

Because it seemed like a good place to end.