As well as venturing out into the real world for the essential mind-nourishment of socialising, window shopping, walking in the fresh air and taking in the world around me, I love to cocoon; holing up in my Creative Room to plot and write and make and do. I like to dock my iPod and play it on random, type like crazy, cut out fabrics and put together mood-boards, scrapbooks; write lists and connect ideas in OneNote.

I’m a bit of a night-owl and really get into the creative ‘zone’ late at night. Like the sea, I can also experience dramatic changes in my emotional state; one minute calm, clear, the next a frenzy of excitement or the perfect storm of a mid-afternoon rage.

The Rage can strike at any time. What can I say? I’m a passionate and crazy-creative person. A diamond in the rough, some would say…

Reading has always been a big part of my life, from Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine which I read and read and read as a child, to the lifeline of my library card growing up in the Highlands to the rich shelves bursting with every kind of book in the charity shops when I first moved to Glasgow.

Books are such a crucial aspect of a writer’s education; life-blood for the vagabond mind; seed bombs for the imagination; graffiti for dreams; gold bullion for boosting etymological acuity.

Some of my favourites are:

• The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Wild Swans, Jung Chang
• Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
• Memoirs of  Geisha, Arthur Golden
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Pursuit of Happiness, Douglas Kennedy
• Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan
• The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson
• Too Close to the Falls – Catherine Gildiner
• The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
• Wonderful Today, Pattie Boyd
• On the Road – Jack Kerouac