After five attempts at getting published, novelist Iain Banks finally reached a wider audience with The Wasp Factory - largely because he discovered the concept of the second draft.

"Previously I had this idea that publishers getting my manuscript would say: It's a bit of a rough diamond we can polish up to lustrous quality'," says Iain.

Now, 24 years later, Iain is releasing his 23rd published novel, and 11th science fiction work, Matter, which he will be promoting at the Old Market, in Hove.

From the age of 11 Iain Menzies Banks had dreamed of being a writer.

His first novel-length piece of work, written when he was 16, was a spy story influenced by Alistair MacLean.

"The second was a 400,000-word novel influenced by Catch-22 and Stand On Zanzibar by sci-fi writer John Brunner," says Iain.

"My next three novels were all science fiction, and were all unpublished, but I really did think of myself as a science fiction writer.

"I got fed up sending novels away and getting them sent back again so I thought I should write a mainstream novel."

After the success of The Wasp Factory, published when Iain was 30, science fiction elements started creeping into his mainstream works Walking On Glass and The Bridge, before he finally got the go ahead from his then publishers, Macmillan, to re-work one of his earlier sci-fi novels.

The result was Consider Phlebas, the first of the seven-strong Culture series, of which Matter is the latest.

To distinguish between the two genres of books, Iain put his middle initial in his name for the science fiction works, and started to alternate between the two styles on a yearly basis.

"It was like a plate-spinning routine on an ancient variety show," says Iain.

"It took a lot of effort to keep the two careers going at the same time. Alternating between the two was the only obvious way to do it.

"Even publishing a book a year would mean a two-year gap between the mainstream and science fiction novels, which is long enough for people to start forgetting about you."

The time between novels did ease as his fame grew, and he even found time to write a non-fiction book in 2003 after being approached by publishers Century.

Raw Spirit followed his journey around various Scottish whisky distilleries, taking in a few choice anecdotes along the way.

"It was dead easy, I didn't even have to think of a plot," he says. "I'm only ashamed and embarrassed I hadn't thought of it myself."

The book also tackled subjects like the Iraq war, something he is passionate about. When Iraq was invaded on March 23, 2003, he tore up his passport and sent the pieces to Tony Blair saying he was ashamed to be British.

"A lot of people were really stupid about Iraq," he says now. "They had this touching idea that governments wouldn't lie.

"We're pretty powerless to do much about it. All you can do is protest and put it on record that you were against it."

Now he is working on his next mainstream fiction book, which he starts writing in October.

"At the moment I'm thinking about thinking about it, which is an important part of the writing process," he says.

"To the untrained eye it looks like I'm lazing around, but it is a vitally important part of the enterprise. In a month or two I will start thinking about it properly which also looks a bit like I'm doing b***** all..."

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