I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it. |
I used to throw away my holograph manuscripts after I'd typed them, but I'm keeping a lot of them now, because obviously, at 50, I'm starting to think, if anyone ever is interested in me after I'm dead, they can look and see. |
I used to work all hours of day and night, but changes in my life and physical stamina have meant that now I rarely work so long as I did-4 in the morning was a reasonable time to me, for finishing up. That isn't in my range any more. |
I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing. |
I was reading some complex books in my own youth-and no, I didn't always understand every word, let alone every concept-but I got the main thrust, which was like a lifeline in a fluctuating world. |
I was very interested by the eastern idea of death as a woman... the type of eastern literature where death was personified as a woman; women were considered dangerous and untamed and pariah material, and that was why death was in female form. |
I will admit to a pleasure and sense of hope in what I see as the basic teachings of Christ, stripped of the nonsense that has sometimes been accumulated about them and the embarrassing misunderstanding. |
I work when I can and feel able to, but that is still most days. |
I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe! |
I'm a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction. |
I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it! |
I've also done contemporary novels, a detective novel, which is coming out soon, and lesbian fiction. |
I've also written a big fantasy, very much the sort of thing I used to write, set in kind of a Greek world, though with a lot of differences. |
I've got a couple of science fiction ideas that I want to do, both quite harsh - and possibly quite funny. And not like anything I've done so far. But I'm never entirely sure what I'm going to do. It's always a surprise to me. |
I've written two books set in India... In the mid-'80s, I just fell for India, and it was like a love affair. I was obsessed with it. I read a few things, and looked at films, and it was as though I was more there than in England, where I was writing! This always happens to me, and it's magical. |