Books are time machines, transporting us out of our own lives into other times and other places.
Despite the fact the studio looks out of five windows onto a picture perfect view of sky, hills and wide open spaces, I work with my blinds firmly drawn, daylight filtered through their white canvas, a painterly northern light falling through two big skylights above my table, and nothing visible outside to distract me.
Growing up a lonely only child prepared me for the years of solitude spent as a writer; years spent in the company of people who don't exist, imaginary people you have conversations with. It's a paid form of madness, this writing stuff.
I'll always write picture books - it's just what I do. I'd even do it if I wasn't being paid.
There are whole months at a time when my head is so full of ideas that I wake in the middle of the night and lie in the dark telling myself stories. There are also long, dark nights when I just know I'll never write another word: I'm finished, empty, a husk... Oh dear, yes, twitch, yawn, how I've suffered insomnia for my art.
It's a very dull thing to watch, a writer at work. So dull that whole casts of characters show up just to watch the boring writer writing.
I love my shed. It's my space and my mess - and I know where everything is.
I'm ridiculously proud of my children. More so than any of my books. I suspect I wouldn't have written any of them if I hadn't been lucky enough to have this huge family.
I call my golden retriever Cara my 'white wolf.' She's changed my attitude and made me write this book where the wolf is the hero, not the villain.
For me, stories were brothers, sisters and friends, filling the long hours between childhood and adolescence, holding up a true mirror in which I might find out who I was rather than a distorted reflection of who I was expected to become.
I was never cold-blooded enough to look for a gap in the market. I loved stories and wanted to tell stories that should be told.
I'm afraid there are no magical tips. There is no secret. Writing is all about telling stories as well as you can.
No ideas are harmed in the making of my books, by the way. All I do with my best ideas is run with them, fast as I can, taking notes and occasionally suggesting a left hand turn rather than the right hand one which might have taken us both over a precipice.
Books are mind reading devices; they allow us free access to the thoughts and dreams of people we have never met.
My job is not to frighten children, but sometimes addressing fears and concerns within the safe boundaries of a picture book can fill me with an awesome responsibility to be as truthful and transparent as possible.
