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Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.

I've written something like 17 novels, which isn't bad, I suppose, but my father wrote 120 books, my mother 40. In comparison, I'm lazy.

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.

Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.

I have many books that I want to write; I'd like to think that I'll be around for another 20 years or so and write another dozen novels, probably some sort of imaginative literature... Never again another seven-volume saga.

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book.