Stuff lands on my desk. Sometimes I can’t bear even  to look at it. Being ever mindful of how much work it takes to write a book  –  okay, it’s not like ploughing a field but it does require a certain amount of effort and application – I don’t want to be the one to turn…

Late last evening an invitation plinked into my In Box. Well, kind of. The Cultural Institute at the Bulgarian Embassy in London is hosting a forum on Bulgaria and its image in Europe and the gist of the invitation was that they would have loved to ask me to speak but were unable to offer…

   Almost without exception every novel I’ve ever written has caused some reader to get in touch with me and ask me how I know so much about their life. I try to assure them they’re not being stalked by a crazy old scribbler. The fact is, there are only so many stories in the…

Time is a strange thing for a writer. Sometimes it passes at a luxuriously leisurely pace and you can spend a whole morning deciding whether to name a character Desmond or Donald. What do you mean, does it matter? Are you crazy? Then, often without warning, time scrunches up into a log jam of tasks that must be…

    When people find out I’m a novelist they ask, quite reasonably, what kind of books I write. That’s the moment when I long to be able to say ‘Mills & Boon,’ or ‘thrillers’. Then they’ll know exactly what they’re dealing with. As it is, the most helpful thing I can do is to murmur ‘social…