I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a story. Only after this do I enter the story world, where I meet the characters and, together, we work through the day and night.

Burma evoked the lost Kenyan soldiers who served in the war. You never hear about them. There were a significant number of casualties, men who never came back home. But they're never commemorated.

Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

I like talking to myself and making patterns out of the letters of the alphabet on blank surfaces.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

I can edit into infinity. It's such a joy. I'd probably edit until the last word. Until there's only one word left.