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I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.

My cousin in Louisiana started a small company with a little savings, renovating houses. A single mom, she saved enough to buy a home and provide child care for her son. When the economy went belly up, so did her company. She was forced to sell her home and move in with her parents.

I grew up in a few houses because my dad was a builder, so we used to build and sell quite a lot.

My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time. They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.

What I wanted to do was to earn enough money to pay for my mother's house. When my mother passed away, I wanted to buy it from the rest of my family and keep the house in the family. That was the only reason I even attempted writing for money.

The only time I've ever taken out a loan is for the building work I had done at our house and I did that by extending the mortgage.

I ran a 'loan modification machine.'

When I was nine years old, my family lost our home, and the six of us moved into my grandparents' converted garage.

Like so many families, we were dealing with limited means. We weren't poor at all, but we had some challenging times financially. When my stepdad got laid off... we were really trying to find our footing for a couple of years.

The real estate business was something Dad and I could do together.