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I had a complicated life until I was 25. I was born in Bristol and was brought up by my mum and my stepfather in Edinburgh. He introduced me to books.

I studied for my degree in London and consequently ended up spending five years away from Cornwall. I deliberately moved away from the coast to experience a different way of life.

I sat down to try to write 'Edinburgh,' an autobiographical novel, and that took five years to write and two years to sell.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

I lived in upstate New York until I was ten years old and we moved overseas. I have a lot of nostalgic memories of that part of the world, and I love going back there by writing the Lakeshore books.

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.

I spent my entire childhood in the same town, in Kent. I went to grade school there. There was a boarding school that my mother taught at, called - appropriately enough - Kent School, that I went to. Yeah, pretty much my entire childhood was spent in that town.

I started writing juvenile novels around 1985. I never really thought of it as a career, but more as a way to make a living.

I lived in Wales back in 1982 and 1983. I studied journalism at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education just off Newport Road in Cardiff.

I had a whole Scottish existence until we moved to London when I was four.