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I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

I don't very often read novels.

I can only write about two or three pages of fiction a day.

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.

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

Writing a book is such a full-time job. If you're away for a few days, you have to start again.