I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.

Google maps are one thing but there’s no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place....

The 1950s is a key decade in the 20th Century. Each year has a distinctive flavour.

If we don’t value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?

Sometimes you don’t even have to have sex at all, and for that kind of sicko, you charge double.

I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.

He often came back ‘all thinky’ from work.

I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers’ job specification.

I’ve found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It’s possible to make a connection with any kind of writing – as long as the writing is good.

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.

I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That’s not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It’s just that I find it quite...

You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.

I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres – the fiction has to be real inside your head.

The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment – anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion – and that is one of its greatest strengths.

I’m proud of the culture I come from – we’re a small country and a close-knit community.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.

We are living in glorious days where each readers’ voice can be heard.

She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk.

Once you’re on the pleasure express, it’s hard to get off and switch to another, slower service.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don’t chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.

A writer is like a stick of rock – the words go right through.

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they’re best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish – we’re famous for travelling in search of adventure.

He prefers his adventures second hand.

In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out – checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how...

I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we’ve come from.

The financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.

All those kisses. There must have been a thousand. They engulfed me like some kind of all consuming dream where I became very alive and very relaxed at the same time.

It was clearly a lot more difficult in the field than in the office, where you could keep your distance and maintain a calculated composure. Being faced with real people was a far tougher call...

I’m a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online.

Sometimes life isn’t what we want, it’s what we get.

Crime writers, I’ve noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven’t been caught yet!

I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.

He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash.

The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.

We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press.

People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really.

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

Vesta was so good with paperwork – you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and she’d construct a story from it worthy of a novel.

She was herself in their company but a very specific version of herself.

Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.

Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I’m considering is an enormous help.

Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood.

It seemed to me that these months of watching and listening, second-guessing words and phrases, seeking so much that was new, had somehow changed me.

The bonds between a family are strange indeed.

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.

He’s more a shape in a drape than a hep cat

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

In crime books it’s possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it’s new. Nowadays it’s part...