That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.

It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

It's those little daily incidents of life that are dramatic, and if you put a frame around it , suddenly they become much bigger and much more important than you ever imagined.

You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.