As an historical novelist - there are few jobs more retrospective.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.

Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.