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I think there have always been male writers, female writers. As a reader, I never picked up a book and said, 'Oh, I can't read this - it's about a male,' and set it back down.

It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.

I want my books to force readers to recognise the fact that a woman is a human being just like them.

If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book.

I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines.

Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

The business of fiction is the study of the human condition, and gender is something that many humans are obsessed with, thus making it rather difficult to ignore when studying the human condition!

I'm a very girlie girl, but I often find the heroes of my books trying to take over the story. In truth, I enjoy writing the male point of view more than any other.