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I certainly wouldn't define myself as a northerner. I'm not even really sure what that means. I've lived in London for 50 years. I wasn't born here, but I have spent most of my life here. So I don't make much of it, to be honest. I'm just myself.

I've been under the spell of the North ever since my childhood in Alaska. More and more, I've been returning to Alaska, and sometimes my adventures inspire a story.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

People used to say I'm regional, but I'm not... We all have the same human condition.

I grew up in the age of discount air fare, and for me, the act of joining a culture was a great way about learning about that different culture. So I grew up in the South, and went to college in the North, and found out that I learned about myself as a Southerner by leaving the South and going to the Northeast.

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

I was born in the Northeast, and I have Midwestern parents.

Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament.

Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.