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I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.

I didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home.

In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.

I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts, I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

I'd always liked to write, but I never wanted to be a writer, because it seemed a sissy occupation. It is. To this day, I find it terribly easy. And so, rather than trying to hunt up a text, I just wrote one.