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Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.

What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.

In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

I usually have two or three books on the go at the same time. If I'm in different moods, I want to read different things.

Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.

What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings.

The thing I'm always trying to do when I write is hit that sweet spot where the book both keeps you up late at night, and yet a week after you've finished, it still pops back into your head.

Nothing bores me more than books where you read two pages and you know exactly how it's going to come out. I want twists and turns that surprise me, characters that have a difficult time and that I don't know if they're going to live or die.

Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.