... you don't have to wait for someone to treat you bad repeatedly. All it takes is once, and if they get away with it that once, if they know they can treat you like that, then it sets the pattern for the future.
By the time I sat down to write 'Family Pictures,' I hadn't written anything in almost two years, and writing, I have discovered, is a muscle: if it isn't exercised, it will atrophy.
A friend of mine suddenly announced she had written a novel and got a publishing deal; I thought, 'Hang on... if she can do it, I can bloody well do it, too.' That novel went to a bidding war, and went on to be a huge best-seller.
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
I am very busy, life is very busy, and I was, I think, a somewhat lazy friend. I love them, I know they love me, but I didn't make much of an effort.
Melanoma is not the most common of skin cancers, but it is the most dangerous if not found in the early stages.
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 spent the first summer after my diagnosis creeping about in giant sun hats and tents, cursing the sun, staying inside as much as possible. Now I am beginning to think the most important thing is educated sun exposure, because the melanomas of today are not caused by today's sunbathing, but by our childhoods and early adolescence.
Going through an illness and then death of a close friend has changed my attitudes to friendship enormously.
In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.
I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.
As someone who is displaced - I left London almost fifteen years ago to make Connecticut my home - I am drawn to stories about people who don't belong, whether physically or emotionally, and who find their families of choice in their friends.
I know plenty of people with kids in elite, private schools and had heard many stories. I have drifted into the homes of some of those very wealthy families in New York and am fascinated with the dynamic and how much freedom the children are given.
I now realise how liberating all-inclusive resorts are. No carrying huge handbags anywhere. No having to worry about purses being pinched. No totting up the price in your head and fretting that you've spent too much.
I have a theory that you can tell what the head of a company is like by the people who work there. I knew a publishing house that was run on fear and paranoia, and I felt sorry for everyone who worked there. Needless to say, the person at the helm was not known for kindness, warmth, or grace.
The life of a bestselling novelist sounds like it ought to be spectacularly glamorous and fun, but in fact I spend most of my time incognito, and in fact were you to pass me in the street you would think I was just another dowdy suburban mom.
I have learned that it is imperative that I make time for my friends, that they demand to be as much a part of the mix as my family and my work, and perhaps more so, because they are not an inevitability.
Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.
When I was a student, I had a part time job as a barmaid at a dodgy pub in Kent.
I am divorced, and one of the things I am tremendously grateful for is that my ex-husband and I made a decision to go through mediation. I knew a trial would drag on for years, would cost me everything, but worse, would be devastating for our four small children.
