I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No,

I Don't Think You Get Perfect Couples. At Best You Get Two People Building Something, And Working At It, And Loving Each Other, And Doing Their Best To Communicate.

Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

There Was Virginia Boote, The Food And Restaurant Critic, Who Had Once Been A Great Beauty But Was Now A Grand And Magnificent Ruin, And Who Delighted In Her Ruination.

I Can Believe Things That Are True And Things That Aren't True And I Can Believe Things Where Nobody Knows If They're True Or Not.

I Was A Scholarship Minor Public School Day Boy At Ardingly College And Later Whitgift School. Then, Straight Into Work As A Journalist - A Wonderful Thing For A Writer.