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Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.

I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies, and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.

When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.

I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

My own life has been doubly disconnected, as I've written books under two different names. As an author, your name almost becomes a brand; readers know what to expect.

I think you have to have a publishing house that offers you some support.

Again, we turn down most books that have been self-published unless they have a special track record. We have taken a small number on, however, and sold them to major publishers for a nice sum. But that is an exception to the rule.