I wrote four novels under the name Amy Silver. The first one was commissioned, and I was given basically the whole plot and the characters. They told me what to do, and I went straight away and did it. After that, I continued, and I was coming up with more my own ideas, although they did steer me.

Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it's not just in crime, is it? Women's fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There's no male equivalent.

You can do fascinating things with the tricks memory can play and tell. People can come to believe things which didn't happen at all if they're told them enough times.

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me.