Acting is fantastic, but to be able to create a whole world on celluloid is amazing. It's like taking your dreams straight from your head and projecting them onto a screen.

Mindi Scott has a real talent for getting inside her protagonist's head. She sketches out Coley's story in grand swathes, and then paints in all the little details, so that you feel as though you are enmeshed in Coley's brain: thinking her thoughts, feeling her confusion, anger, and, in the end, pain. I just don't think it's possible to read this book and not identify with Coley in some way.

Actually, I love mythology. When I was a kid I was obsessed with myth and I wanted to be a mythologist when I grew up. Then I realized I really just like stories.

I think specifically because of the character that I played, people are very connected to her. I used to get letters from young gay and lesbian and trans-gendered kids saying, 'I didn't kill myself because of Buffy'.

It's all about what you feel on the inside - and I'm feeling like a chocolate chip cookie because I had about ten of them last night!

I wanted to create a heroine that was flawed. I wanted her to be a real person. She's selfish, she's childish, she's immature and because I'm doing a three-book arc I really played that up in the first book. I wanted the reader to be annoyed with her at times.

I'm such a geek, I know all about mythology and I don't know Marc Jacobs.