“I’m leaving my job,” I told Steven Gerrard. I’d just finished doing an interview with him in. This was some time in 2007.

Recipe:

1 inspiring woman – Nana Josie
1 wonderful granddaughter – the shy, arty Mira Levenson
1 family in chaos
1 writing group run by the eccentric Pat Print and her sheepdog, Moses
1 boy with a serious attitude and a hidden past – Jidé Jackson
1 skateboarder and unintentional poet – Ben Gbemi
1 big-hearted best friend who wishes you’d tell her your secrets – Millie Lockhart
1 diary
1 artichoke-heart charm
 Love lost and found

I’m often asked where the idea for Mortlock came from but the truth is there wasn’t one main idea for the book but lots of different ingredients that all merged together one fateful day.

This is a question which is always being asked of authors, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one to admit that I really don’t know the answer. The fact is, I never took a conscious decision to become a writer; I don’t think most people do. Writing, for me, was just something which came naturally. I did it because I felt compelled to do it. Impossible to imagine life without it!

Writing a book, any book, is a really odd thing to do. You sit in a room on your own and you invent people, events, a whole different world. At least that’s what you usually do. I have friends who collaborate with other authors but I could never do that. For me writing is private, personal, selfish I suppose. But with my Booked Up title The Dying Photo it was different.