I think The Nightingale is my best, most mature, most moving novel, but maybe that's just because I love these characters. I love the setting.

There were others, women with stories that were told in a quieter voice: women who hid Jewish children in their homes, putting themselves directly in harm's way to save others. Too many of them paid a terrible, unimaginable price for their heroism. And like so many women in wartime, they were largely forgotten after the war's end.There were no parades for them, very few medals, and almost no mention in the history books.

The answers are what they are. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't true.

The women of the French Resistance astounded me. Isabelle and Vianne [from The Nightingale] are my homage to those brave and forgotten women.

I absolute adore epic journeys that require a protagonist to fight for every victory in the hopes of finding triumph.

I know that sounds ineffective and daunting, but it [throw hundreds of pages away] is actually my favorite part of the writing process.

I do not often follow my characters off on tangents or change my story on a whim. I have an outline which I follow quite sternly...for a good long while. Then it turns out in some way to be insurmountably wrong and I am forced to re-think every component. Usually at this point I throw hundreds of pages away.