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I was lucky enough to be given books that weren't top sellers; books that were kind of under the radar.

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it.

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them.

I was still an avid reader of Mills & Boon romances - on publication day, I used to rush out of work to get to the local book store to grab my favourites before they all disappeared.

Anyway, in the mid 80's I was spending a fortune buying old Golden Age books from the late 30's and 40's and I was making personal appearances at a lot of sci fi and comic book conventions all around the country here so that I could find books for my collection.

I think of my books as mainstream and that's were most people who read them look for them in book stores.

I got my first book deal when I was in college, but it was published in Germany, and I could never actually read it.

I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction.

Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of books, even the smell... Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing.

I came from a home where everybody had a book.