As a child, growing up in Hampstead, North London, I was shockingly fair-skinned. Holidays involved me spending the second and third day face-down on a bed, shrieking should anyone touch my blistered skin.

Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.

I had just got married when I started writing my fourth novel. I'd come back from honeymoon, moved into our first house - a gorgeous little carriage house in London - and made my office on the third floor, overlooking the treetops in North West London.

I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

There's so many great matches that you can think of. I could fantasy book all kinds of stuff, you know, fight a few family members. If we could have Umaga back, I would love to wrestle him in any arena in any town just because of how good he was.

Had I not made it big, my family would have told me to recheck my decision. Now that I am successful, there is no way. They have to accept it gracefully.

It is not only my laboratory and my place of work but also my home, so that on the 30th October I was able to share my happiness immediately with my students and collaborators and, at the same time, with my wife and family.