“The wonderful thing about being a writer is that everything that happens is gris…” — Jane Green

I started to think about the assumptions we make that everyone we meet operates under the same moral code, and how betrayed we feel when that isn't the case.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.

My training as a journalist was invaluable: when I worked on 'The Daily Express,' the editor would often ask for 1000 words within a couple of hours. I could not say I was not inspired. I had to get on with it.