I will always have a soft spot for 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon,' which I discovered just at the age when I was beginning to enjoy the darkness in fairy tales but still wanted a story where the good guys win.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.
I love a big, character-rich story with a dark heart, with a compelling mystery or some kind of ticking clock at its center. I want to be lured in by prose, captured by character, and bound by stellar plotting to keep turning the pages.
Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.
When I started writing 'Luck in the Shadows,' I just wanted to create an adventure story.
I was attracted to 'Half of a Yellow Sun' because of the story.
If you want to tell grown-up fairy tales, you have to look for the dark side.
I've always been a happy-go-lucky person. I haven't got any dark tales, I didn't draw on my own past, I'm from a very normal stable background and had an amazing childhood, and I haven't got any complaints really.
I grew up with a lot of fairy tales. And they had an essence of darkness to them.
I like to look at 'A Place in the Sun' every now and get inspired by it.
I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.