What book feels like home to you?

“Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe. It’s about a young girl from the Midlands coming to London in the ’80s to be the nanny for a famous editor. I grew up—and still live—close to the Camden Town setting, and the whole thing is so warm and filled with nostalgia and humour and the very bohemian essence of North London in the ’80s.”

What’s your most unusual writing habit?

“I used to try to disconnect from the internet when I was writing so that it wouldn’t distract me, but I've given up and learned to embrace it. My writing process now consists of five minutes of writing, followed by five minutes of fantasy online property searches, followed by five more minutes of writing. I cannot actually write without the interleaving property searches.”  

What’s the first thing you do after finishing a draft?

“I type the words THE END, take a photograph, and put it on my social media for posterity and to get my readers excited. If it’s a Friday evening that might then be followed by a glass of wine.”

Describe your writing process in one word?

“Hair-raising.” 

What is your favourite word to use in prose?

“Oh, so many! But I do have a fondness for the word ‘fleeting.’”

Where do you most like to write? 

“At my kitchen table.” 

What moment in your life felt straight out of a novel? 

“The moment I met my husband in 1994 and knew inside two seconds that we would spend the rest of our lives together.”

What emotion do you find hardest to write about? 

“Probably lust or sexual desire.”

Which book is your most treasured possession? 

“My yellowing, pool-water-crispy paperback copy of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I took it on a group holiday to Gozo in 1996, and after reading it I told my friend I’d like to write a book like that. She made me a bet to write three chapters when we got home—I did that, and the rest is history.”

What’s the strangest thing in your workspace? 

“I think the strangest thing about my workspace is its lack of objects. I have a laptop, a coaster, my phone, and nothing else.”