Fantasy gets a mixed reception - a lot of fantasy is formulaic but most of the award-winning fantasy on the contrary tends to be the stuff at the edges of the genre, rather than swimming in the middle.

The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.

It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.

My story reflexes come less from fantasy or horror than from the darker sort of psychological thriller - not as plot-driven as most, rather more mood-driven. My interest in the supernatural is a complication - though I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.

Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don't think about yesterday, and they don't think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.

I went through a phase in my 20s when I was overdosing on self-help books, so it was really refreshing to read 'The Alchemist' because it was a novel, but it still had the same wisdom, wasn't patronising and didn't tell you how you should live your life.

No, my profile has leaped over recent years, so has my life experience, and I look forward to the next 30 years being even more rewarding and satisfying than the previous 60!

Our life is all about the choices we make, and when I was looking for a mate for life, I really was looking for someone who was a family man, somebody who would embrace my girls as much as they were going to embrace me. I guess I just wasn't finished having children yet.