Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.

I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.

I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk.

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.

The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.