Aside from sales, the letters from readers have been primarily positive.

Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

I probably read 100 times more than I write, but that way when I move my characters through it, I know.

I really fell in love with Africa.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I think of my books as mainstream and that's were most people who read them look for them in book stores.

I'm just writing a story that I want to read.

Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.

No, my publisher has always done the marketing.

Of the two, I would think of my work as closer to Science Fiction than Fantasy.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.

I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.

I have been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a long time, since I was 11 or 12 I think, so I understand it and I'm not at all surprised that readers of the genre might enjoy my books.