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I'm a novelist, and I'm a woman, and I'm considered to be a serious author whether I like it or not.

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

But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless.

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.

The feedback I get is that my books are honest. I don't sugar-coat anything. Life is really hard.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

There are some people who have been reading me for years, and they keep saying kind things about the writing. That's what you're writing for, to get people to respond to it.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.