So history is fertile territory for me and I think I could feel happy with any period of history, provided I had the right sources and the necessary time for the initial research.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

Life should be embraced like a lover.

Forget the boring old dictum, 'Write about what you know.' Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.

The imagination conjures gifts; what the ungrateful, unsentimental part of the mind has to do is to unwrap them, find fault with them, see them for what they are and then alter them.

Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.