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The interesting thing is that I found scenes which I put together which could appeal to almost every woman, or apply to almost every woman after the war. Falling in love, dancing, marrying.

Eventually I figured out there was something systematic in the way women are treated.

I have yet to see a drama that puts forward women who are successful and also have a family... they are nearly always seen as victims.

I didn't expect to be doing a whole bunch of Amber Browns. And because it was just one book, and the father had moved away, I didn't realize I was going to have to deal more with shared custody, divorce and all those issues.

I became obsessed with all these women who die never feeling they did anything extraordinary with their lives.

When my first husband died, what I tried to do is to sort of, you know, try to bring some rationale to the circumstance and think about worse circumstances, and also open the door to what other women experienced when all of a sudden they were left alone. And particularly if they had children.

There's so much of, it could have been a very critical examination of what happened, and really the emotional lives of the people involved sort of carry the characters forward.

What I really tried to do with Helen was make her show this sad side of her. She was married off at 16, was so young and living in this castle that can't leave because of how she looks, and married to a man she hates and three times her age.

I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman - in spite of the fact that all three of them reacted positively I still have this fear.

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.