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A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.