I simply talk to people and get them to describe to me their feelings or their work - whichever I'm after. I talked to 8-10 stepfamilies for this novel - I've never interviewed people who wanted/needed to talk so much.

I shall be glad when it's over - we're treating it with such tawdry secularity in the UK. I shall spend the evening of December 31st, happily baby-sitting my granddaughter and wouldn't be anywhere else!

I read fiction avidly - I usually have a nineteenth century novel (the golden age of fiction) on the go, but love Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Richard Ford, Barbara Kingsolver among many others.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

I don't always set stories in villages, more often in towns. But always in smallish communities because the characters' actions are more visible there, and the dramatic tension is heightened.

You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!

The joys and woes of the human heart and the dilemmas of the human condition are universal. Actually, I think the language total is about 28 now - - just added Korean and Taiwan Chinese!

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

It's not so much hearth as family life which is where we all, I'm sure, learn (or fail to learn!) all our life skills for the future.