1) I'm a bit addicted to TV detective shows - good old fashioned British ones. I think it started in my early teens, when I would watch The Inspector Wexford Mysteries and Inspector Morse with my mum. I love the skill of the storytelling, the trail of breadcrumbs they lay towards the big reveal - and seeing if I can get there first. Now a detective show is my favourite thing to curl up in front of on a night in - Lewis, Silent Witness, Waking the Dead, even Midsomer Murders.
Katherine Webb
2) I love horse riding. I learnt at the age of ten and picked it up very quickly. I competed a bit in my teens - mostly show jumping - and always wanted my own horse more than anything else in the world. I continue to ride whenever I can; I'd love to do one the world' great long distance rides - across the Patagonian Andes maybe, or along the old silk road across Mongolia.
3) I've always been a bit of a tom boy, not a girly girl at all. Sometimes I only remember to get my hair cut when it starts getting down towards my elbows… I'm far more at home in wellies in a pub than in heels in a cocktail bar, and I have no fashion sense whatsoever - my sister is great for buying me the sorts of things I should be wearing for birthday and Christmas presents. She's far more sartorially gifted than I am!
4) I'm a pretty good cook, and I make great cakes. My Grandma taught my mother, and she taught me, and I think if you get the basic skills early on in life you're then not afraid to try different, more complicated things, and improve. I still have notable disasters (my first attempt at panna cotta last year resulted in inedible rubber balls you could have played squash with), but that's all part of the fun.
5) I completed my first novel while living in Venice as an au pair in 2000. I'd started it the year before but stalled at what I now know was merely 'the wall' - that difficult middle section of a book when all seems awful and aimless. In Venice I found the time and the will to pick up the manuscript again, and there was a marked improvement to the second half I then wrote - I'd already developed as a writer. I'll never forget the feeling of accomplishment in finishing that first draft.
6) I love the desert. In my new book, which I'm weeks from completing, I've been writing about the lure of the desert, and trying to put my finger on why it has fascinated explorers and adventurers for generations. It's something to do with the size of it, the untouchability of it, and the silence there… I'd had tasters of it in the Sahara in Morocco, and in the desert south west of the USA, but last year I went into the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert in Oman. It was the most beautiful place I have ever been, and it had a profound impact on me.
7) I started to write a very young age - I can remember writing stories about my toys when I was about seven, but my mum claims it started even earlier than that. At secondary school and college I wrote short stories and (very bad) poems, as well as factual pieces for newsletters and things like that. I started to write a novel when I was about 15. I had the whole story mapped out, but only managed to write the first few chapters. Years and twelve novels later (I wrote six before I was published) this pattern still forms the basic framework of my working 'method' - the planning and plotting and research is still the most fun and exciting part, the actual writing takes grit and focus that I clearly didn't have at age 15!
8) I really hate public speaking - particularly reading aloud. I lived in terror of it at school, and dreading having to present seminar papers at university. I wrote a poem about it at school, and it won a competition. I had to go up on stage in assembly to collect the prize and give a speech… I'm getting better - it's part of an author's job these days. Now I'm fine being interviewed in front of an audience or talking about one of my books, but I still hate reading aloud and avoid it if I possibly can.
9) It's a bit of a cliché for an author to have cats, but I have two. We always had a cat when I was growing up, and now a house just doesn't feel quite like a home without one. I have a ginger giant (he's over 8kg) called Erik, and a small, black mog called Pole. Both were rescues and couldn't have more different personalities - Erik's the most laid back creature in the world; Pole sees danger in every shadow…
10) I'm a keen traveller. The more I travel the more I realise how much more there is to see, but I don't want to become one of those competitive travellers who obsessively counts up the number of countries they've been to, or never goes back to a place they've already been, even if they loved it. So, if time and money allow, I try to visit a new country every couple of years or so, and to revisit places I love in between - Thailand, Greece, France and Italy. I'll definitely go back to Oman in the future, if I get the chance.
