I caught up with Francis O'Dowd in what he jokingly refers to as the drawing room. There, surrounded by guitars, books, drawing equipment and the occasional bottle of cider, he was busy putting the final touches to a project that's kept him busy over the last decade: Wishhobbler, the dark fairytale of a young girl struggling to cope with a home background of poverty and monsters.

I started off by pointing out that ten years is a long time to spend on one book.

Yeah ... I suppose. But I spent a lot of that time not writing. Finishing my degree, starting teaching,  nearly getting married, leaving teaching 'cause there were no jobs, getting another degree to change career and then ending up teaching again. So, a lot of distractions. Plus, I'd never written anything that size before. It took a few goes to get it right. The next one will be quicker; maybe only nine years.

So how did the book come about?

Well, I had the character of Sir Fistache for some time. He popped into my head one night while listening to 'I'm Running' by Yes. That's the bit that happened ten years ago. So I was looking for a story for him. I thought it'd be a more traditional sword and sorcery type thing. Then I was reading Love on the Dole by ... is it Walter Greenwood? It's set in a 1930s industrial town, and I was very struck by the poverty and the kind of enclosed world the characters lived in. Their whole lives seemed spent in this tiny corner of town and everything revolved around work and making ends meet. Then I saw a book of photographs of the old Glasgow closes at the end of the nineteenth century and it was the same kind of thing ... these narrow alleyways with their high walls forming this enclosed world. So I was thinking of using that in a story. Then Fistache turned up there one day. As I got to thinking how he'd arrived there, centuries out of his own time, the whole thing started coming together.

This is O'Dowd's first novel, but his interest in writing goes back a long way.

I've been coming up with stories for as long as I can remember. I spent my time at school daydreaming (which I'm now supposed to tell the kids off for). Where we lived was a little isolated and we were allowed to wander freely over what had once been a farm. It was an amazing place to be as a kid. It fuelled the imagination. It had so many different parts to it. Every corner you turned could take you to a whole different world. I'd wander around for hours at a time, spinning these huge tales. Epics with a cast of thousands, you know?

My head was going the whole time. I read a lot, and watched a lot of TV. And every time I found something that I liked, I took it away and played with it. I loved things like Monty Python, the Laurel & Hardy shorts, Doctor Who, Tiswas, Worzel Gummidge and so on ... I think they've been a big influence. The way that they would take these absurd ideas and apply a kind of internal logic to them.

Wishhobbler is a fully illustrated book, featuring over twenty of O'Dowd's highly detailed pen and ink drawings, the originals of which are all A3 sized. It was his intention to illustrate the book from the outset and he sees the images as being as much a part of the story as the text.

Again, it's something I've been doing for years. I'm the youngest of four brothers. They're all very creative and were always working on something. One of them was trying to break into the newspapers as a cartoonist. He got me into the idea of taking more time over drawings; of preparing them in pencil and then going over them in ink. And he was always able to give you an idea of how to make something better. So for years all I wanted to be was a cartoonist, although teachers tried to convince me that nuclear physicists had much more fun.

I was about 16 when I saw a magazine article about an artist called David S. Hall. He used to work for Disney doing inspirational art at the early stages of a film. And he did hundreds of drawings and paintings for Alice In Wonderland which were ditched. Someone found them 40 years later and they were putting them in a book. The idea of having a story and there being tons of pictures that were part and parcel of it ... Of working on a grand scale ... From then on I was on the hunt for a good idea.

You mentioned some of the things that influenced your writing. Who has been an influence on your artwork?

Well, there's my brother, Rick, who I mentioned. Then there's Albert Uderzo, who does the Asterix books. His characters are so solid, so real. He gets so much expression into the tiniest of gestures. Also fantasy artists like Rodney Matthews, Roger Dean and Chris Achilleos. And Dave Gibbons, who works in comics. His black and white work is very solid and definite.

I understand there's some music for Wishhobbler?

The motionless picture soundtrack, I suppose you'd call it. Writing, drawing and making music are my main interests, so it seemed quite natural to combine them in one project. It's kind of a forty minute suite based around the main events of the story.

What are you going to do with it? Has it been recorded?

We're in the middle of recording it just now. It's for guitar and keyboard, so there's a nice range of sounds without it requiring a whole load of other people. Originally it was only meant to be short piece for the website, but it's grown somewhat. We're discussing the possibility of putting it out on CD.

With a number of projects in the pipeline, O'Dowd is hoping it won't be another ten years before he finishes the next one. 'Just so long as there aren't too many distractions,' he says as I trip over a pile of homework jotters waiting to be corrected.

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