The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman I'd done this privately I wanted him to look at it approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Before I became a suspense novelist I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.

I bought a selection of short romantic fiction novels studied them decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.

I'm not embarrassed about the novels I wrote when I was younger but I couldn't write them today because of my religion.

But John Landis wrote a good relationship which is really what the film's about. A very straightforward young woman who's very sure of herself and she meets a young man who needs some taking care of.

It was a good 15 or 20 years before anyone at Rand would be in the same room with me. They didn't want the question raised 'What's your relationship with Daniel Ellsberg?' And not one of them wrote me a letter because they didn't want a letter of theirs to show up in my trash - which the FBI had been going through.

I always wanted to work at 'Take A Break' magazine you know just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote 'Garnethill' because I didn't get that job!

I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be but it does what it sets out to do.

One of the things I've always liked about my husband is he's very good at lots of stuff. He was an English teacher when I met him. He wrote poetry and played the guitar. As time went on he decided to go into economics so he's very analytical and mathematical in addition to his artsy side.

What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel read 2 000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

I wrote things for the school's newspaper and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals but even as I withdrew into this reading I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

In my late teenage years I developed a real passion for it and wrote a lot of poetry.

I was one of those dark quiet kids that wrote poetry.