I was very touched by this short article by Khadija Osman, a member of staff at the Round Table Books store in Brixton, London, talking about the impact that my character Debbie Hemlock had on her when she was a young girl.

I've always tried to write about different types of people in my books. It's not that I'm overly PC or trying to provide a wider appeal to boost sales -- it just seems like a natural thing to me as a writer, to try and observe and understand the world through the eyes and minds of others. A lot of my key characters ARE white and male, because I'm white and male, so it's obviously the perspective I most readily identify with. But I'm always wondering what life would be like if I was black or Asian or a girl or a woman or, or, or...

I can never truly know, of course -- well, unless reincarnation is a genuine thing and I've been those people before or will be them further down the line -- but that doesn't stop me wondering, and exploring those alternatives with my stories. I think it's a good thing for us humans to do, to put ourselves in the shoes of others, even if they're shoes that we can never actually fill. Bridges between us can only be built if we're willing to study the gaps between us from both sides.