I'm working on a poetry collection for Papaveria Press . It fills me with trepidation - poetry is something I'm much more self-conscious about than prose.

I put that part of myself into both Brendan and Evelyn [from The Thorn and the Blossom] - as well as some of my own anxieties about the academic life!

Perhaps it’s when you come to the realization that the point of life isn’t to be rich, or secure, or even to be loved - to be any of the things that people usually think is the point. The point of life is to live as deeply as possible, to experience fully. And that can be done in so many ways.

I worry very much that people won't like it, or will think it's simply silly. But I have a post-it note above my desk that says "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" And if I weren't afraid, I would do a poetry collection.

It's very difficult to put in the work unless you believe that what you're doing is significant in some way.

I loved writing something people usually have - miscommunication, for example. Now that I've written a romance, I'm sure I'll write more: it's fascinating to put people together and see what happens, how they fall in love and what that means in their lives.

It's appropriate to have magic in a love story, because magic is a sort of metaphor for what love feels like? When we fall in love, the world feels magical to us. It becomes an enchanted place.