Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.