Author

It's such a risk to write a novel that it's easy to become conservative - you're spending what would be, for me, a couple of years of my life on a single idea. Which is maybe one of the reasons I write stories - if it doesn't work, you've only lost a month.

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

Feeling useful in medicine allows me to not feel so stupid when making up stories.

The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.

I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.