Friends, family, cream cakes, my pets, the AMAZING emails & letters my readers send me, sunshine... and dancing about to the Chilli Peppers, Green Day, The Cure, Killers etc.

Worms. (More seriously, war, famine, disease, injustice, cruelty & global warming... we live in a messed-up world.)

Any little black top worn with a sticky-out retro 50's style skirt... and black opaque tights with flat boots or Rocket Dog pumps.

At the moment, St Trinians!! Why wasn't MY school like that? I wonder if they have any vacancies for an art teacher....

'Follow your dreams...'

Half-an-hour if I'm going out in public, five minutes if I'm at home & walking the dogs!!!

Gemini.

Bags, but they have to be made of fabric and big enough to stash books, chocolate, pens etc. I have a few, but they're never very expensive - I am NOT a designer-ish person.

Chocolate, always.

Shy, lonely, lanky, chaotic and daydreamy. I could never work out why my life was dull and ordinary when the girls in the magazines I read led such adventurous, glam, romantic lives... it never was like that for me. It's probably one of the reasons I started writing!

Maybe, because it helped me keep up with how kids felt and what they were worrying about... I wasn't always happy as a teen, so I do genuinely care about the problems kids can face at that age. Working as Agony Aunt for Shout was a way to try and help, and in a funny way the books are too...

I think a great teen book has to be fast-paced and easy to read, with strong, quirky characters, emotion, mystery, magic and romance!

Miss Quinn, the art teacher from Driftwood, is a thinly disguised version of what i was like when I was a high school art teacher...

My fave book to write was Dizzy, the first. This was because I didn't know if anyone would ever publish or read it, so there was no pressure, & no deadlines either! It'll always be special to me because it was the first...

My readers keep me in the loop about what they'd like to read about, and sometimes an idea can grow from something they are talking about or going through... Recently, a Polish girl in a school I visited gave me a fantastic letter describing her first impressions of the UK, and that grew into idea for my next book Angel Cake...

You're right on the edge of everything, about to dive headlong into your life, and it feels like EVERYTHING is possible. Everything feels so intense! Your moods might hit the highs and lows, but that energy and enthusiasm is unstoppable.