When did you start writing fiction?

I was twelve. My heroine, a young girl called Charlotte, was the most boring twit ever to hit the page. Luckily that book didn’t last beyond the first 1000 words. Since then some of the things I’ve written include children’s stories, some Mills and Boon style romantic novelettes (all rejected out of hand), any number of very bad short stories, including one in which the main characters were worms, and a 250,000 word ghost story.


Are you a character or a plot driven writer?

Definitely plot driven. I’m in complete awe of writers who start out with a basic idea and a couple of characters and see where it takes them. Directly to the Gin bottle is where it would take me. Before I can start typing I need to know exactly where my book is going. I plan it out in detail, chapter by chapter and I have to know how it’s all going to end. Of course, things change once I start writing, sometimes even my characters run away with me and that’s fine, but the blueprint has to be there before I have the courage to begin.


Is it true you wrote Sacrifice without visiting Shetland?

Yes. I wrote the book relying on maps, the internet and photographs. Several people, upon reading the early drafts were kind enough to say it was a very atmospheric and realistic portrait of the islands. I smiled sweetly, thanked them and enjoyed my private joke. But when the book started selling to publishers around the world, I grew nervous and decided I’d better go check it out. Most of it, thanks to the Ordnance Survey maps, I’d got pretty much right but I had made one or two howlers. The one that made me laugh the most was the scene directly after Tora’s sailing accident. Originally, I had her staggering into the post office at Gutcher on Yell. The map showed the letters PO, so I assumed I’d be fine. There is now a photograph on my desk of a twelve-inch-high, red post-box on a stick, to remind me of the dangers of assuming.


Are any of your characters based on real people?

No. It simply isn’t possible to put real people into a novel; they never do what you need them to. I do, though, borrow bits and pieces from people I know: a hairstyle here, a quirky little characteristic there. I’m particularly lazy when it comes to naming my minor characters. It’s a case of: Oh, I need three women’s names: right, who lives down the road?

More particularly, Kenn Gifford owes his outward appearance to a man I saw on the Chiltern line to London Marylebone one morning. Dana Tulloch is the spitting image of one good friend of ours, but her tidiness, organisational skills and immaculate dress-sense come from another. Anyone wanting to see what Helen looks like should visit my village book club: she’s usually there, delicately sipping the chardonnay and entertaining us all with her scary medical stories. Oh, and there’s a lot of my husband Andrew in Duncan, although Andrew doesn’t harbour dangerous secrets and cavort with psychopathic monsters...

... at least, I don’t think he does.


Is Tora based on you?

If only. I suspect in Tora, I’ve created the woman I’d liked to have been. In all honesty, though, I think I gave her a lot of my own faults. My sister, on first reading the book, said: “I’m really not keen on this heroine, she reminds me far too much of you.” My mother, after her first reading, practically had to book herself into therapy, so convinced was she not only that Tora’s hang-ups were all mine, but that I’d suffered terribly as a child, that I was a seriously damaged adult and that it was all her fault. I had to take her firmly in hand and explain that whilst I might have used one or two of my own characteristics, these have been exaggerated tenfold, mixed with qualities that have nothing to do with me, jumbled up with stuff I’ve borrowed from elsewhere and, after all that, the character really does take on a life of her own. She becomes her own person, unique, complex and totally real – in my mind at least and, if I’ve done a good enough job, in the mind of the reader. That’s the great joy of writing fiction.

In my next book, the heroine has a very complex and not always positive relationship with her mother. Not looking forward to explaining that one!


Which writers do you most admire and enjoy?

I love and continually re-read all the old classics: Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Austen and Trollope being particular favourites. I used to be one of those “I read Lord of the Rings every summer” types. Now I just watch the Peter Jackson films with my son.

I think Margaret Yorke is a master of the English crime novel. Not only is her contribution to the genre immense, but she is exceptionally skilful at portraying the sinister undercurrent of violence that so often underpins civilised English life.

My book club keeps me up to date with contemporary literary fiction; novels most of us have loved in the last few years include Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian and Andrea Levy’s Small Island. I am a great fan of book clubs, especially the one I belong to. I love the way it’s made me discover novels and writers that I would never normally have considered and also, that we all never – ever – completely agree on a book.

I try hard to convince my son that Philip Pullman and JK Rowling are the finest children’s writers ever, but he will insist on choosing those blessed Horrid Henry stories.

Moving onto crime, thrillers and the like, I am a huge Dan Brown fan. I love the complexities of his plots, the endless twists and surprises, the depth of his research and the sheer pace of his books. I make a point of reading everything that Tess Gerritsen, Kathy Reichs and Joanne Harris publish and I’ve enjoyed the first novels of Simon Beckett and Nick Stone. But if I had to choose just one personal favourite above all it would be Stephen King. His supernatural thrillers may not be to everyone’s taste but for sheer breadth of imagination and flawless prose, I really don’t think he can be topped.


Which writer would you most like to meet?

Stephen King. But I’d be so star-struck I’d drool on the floor and blither like an idiot. So, it’s perhaps better if this remains an unfulfilled ambition.


Do you have any advice for new writers?

As I’m one myself it would seem a bit presumptuous. All I would say is you can learn a lot from your rejections. If agents and publishers think you have potential, they’ll usually let you know, albeit in a roundabout way. If you are getting predominantly what I call “nice rejections”, you should stick at it. You’re almost there.


What is your next book about?

Snakes.