Don't let his mild-mannered exterior fool you: Robert Hough is an adventure junkie. In his novels, he's inhabited the golden age of Mexican radio, sinister Russian espionage, the weird and wonderful history of circus cat trainers, and the terrifying universe of a Romanian stowaway.

Fans of Hough's epic, rollicking tales will not be disappointed to learn that his latest, the historically based swashbuckler The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan, contains bifurcated tongues, criminal islands, pirate booty and a dancing bear.

In his own words, Hough describes how his latest corker of a novel came together — all from the calm comfort of his book-lined home office.

"When I first started writing novels in my home office, my kids were little and they were at home, and there was either my wife or for a while there we had a nanny, and I actually used to wear noise-blocking headphones so I could hear myself think. And now, the house is absolutely quiet. But funny enough, sometimes I'll put them on just to concentrate, it's almost like it's keeping the thoughts from falling out of my head. Somehow I can hear the characters talking a lot better if I've got earplugs in."

"I've been parenting for the last 10–15 years, and as a result, most of my book ideas come from my kids. I created a chess-playing character — my protagonist, Benny Wand — after one of my daughters got really into chess. I just wanted someone who thought like a high-ranking chess player to lead this crazed novel. The fact that he plays chess like a prodigy is discovered by his boss, Henry Morgan, the real-life sea captain. I discovered Morgan researching Viking costumes for a school event, of all things, and then ended up with pirates after a wrong turn in the Googlesphere."

"When I first started writing books, I was much younger and I could completely rely on my memory for all details. I find that I can't any more, so with The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan I got this big sheet, like the kind you might do art on, and just made lists of key features of life in the new world in the mid-1600s, so I would have 'Food', and then I would have the names of foods, or 'Guns' and I would have the types of guns they had, or 'Boats' and the list of the kinds of boats they had. That kept me on track, but there are a whole lot of details about life back then that I made up because I really wanted the book to have this fantasy feel to it."

"Our house came with bookshelves in the room that became my office, so I'm surrounded by books when I write. I used to have just some posters on the walls. But then one day I decided, you know what, I'm going to own up to the fact that I've actually written some novels, so I now have posters of the covers of all my novels surrounding me. It helps because every once in a while, when I get absolutely stuck, when I think there's no way I'm going to finish this novel, I can look up and think, 'Yeah, you've been here before,' and finish the book."

"One trick I used to have when writing was I used to get up, grab coffee and start writing literally within three minutes. Why? I found that if I was half asleep when I started writing, those voices that tell you you're probably going to fail are much dimmer. By the time I'd woken up fully and those voices came alive, I had a fair head of steam going and they wouldn't ruin my day. I did this for years. I'd get up, grab coffee and be working within three minutes, half asleep. I don't do that so much any more. I guess I've written enough novels that I don't seem to have that insecurity as much. I have lots of insecurity, don't worry about that, all writers do. It just comes with the territory, but it's not so bad that I need to start writing when I'm half asleep."