A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.
There are only so many stories in the world... Duplication of plots is bound to happen because most writers have read very extensively in their genre and have become aware they are adding an extra layer to the meta-narrative, finding a new spin on the original.
I remember talking to John Mortimer, and he said he was relying on Rumpole to keep him in his old age; well, I'm doing the same with Phryne - she's my mainstay.
I went to a basic school, which had children from all corners of the world, and met my best friend and had to learn Greek because she didn't speak English.
Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.
I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.
When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.
Clothes were terribly important in the '20s. They really were an arbiter of who you were and how much money you had: an indicator of social status.
I'm a duty solicitor, so I can't fix someone's life; all I can do is fix the problem I've got in front of my eyes.
I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time.
I decided that if I want to write about a female hero in the 1920s, I'm going to have to give her all the advantages I can because she has serious disadvantages in being a woman. I wasn't going to have her cowed or overawed by class, so she had to be titled.
I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels.
I used to tell my three younger siblings stories because that was my household chore, and I told long stories in installments because it was easier and more fun than making up a new story every night. I loved it.
I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.
Unanswered questions make my head itch.
My work is very carefully researched. Sometimes I have to ditch an idea because I can't prove it.
I didn't want to write a grown-up account of Gallipoli. I wanted to find out what would happen if I looked at Gallipoli through the eyes of an innocent.
The stories from World War I are worse than anything I have ever read.
If you look at the map, there's Thrace, Greece, Bulgaria, and there's tiny Gallipoli. It is such a small part of the whole peninsula, and yet you only hear about this little tiny bit.
I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back.
