You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house.

Various books revolutionised what I think about novels and showed me that they're not strict, formulaic things. 'Coming Through Slaughter' by Michael Ondaatje was one of them.

Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament.

I've always been interested in the history of radical feminism - what happened to those women of the 1960s and '70s.

People talk about great motivators, but I think motivation has to come from within the individual first, because if you haven't got that inner strength yourself, and belief and you want to do well, it doesn't matter what anybody else says. You have to have that; it has to be inbuilt.

You learn more from losing than winning. You learn how to keep going.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.