I'm fond of all my characters so every time one doesn't make the cut I'm a little disappointed although I understand it.

All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.

Tears aren't a woman's only weapon.

Life is very full of sex, or should be. As much as I admire Tolkien - and I do, he was a giant of fantasy and a giant of literature, and I think he wrote a great book that will be read for many years - you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from, since you can't imagine Hobbits having sex, can you? Well, sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, it motivates us, it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you've got an incomplete world.

The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.

I've written some standalone novels, but a book series allows fans in. There's much more intense involvement.

Even the sky was grey. Grey and grey and greyer. The whole world grey, everywhere you look, everything grey except the eyes of the bride. The eyes of the bride were brown. Big and brown and full of fear.