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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

She curled sideways into the milky light of the bedside lamp and began to read.

We had laid down the law : no chocolate, no sex.

When the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and she said, “Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder,” and her five year...

In a heartbeat, he understands why religions are born on the sands – there is nothing here for a man but his own mind.

Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you’ll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other’s work as...

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...

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.

History was my favourite subject at school and in my spare time I read historical novels voraciously from Heidi to the Scarlet Pimpernel and from Georgette Heyer to Agatha Christie.

If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy...

Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.

A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.

Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder...

I’m very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.

I’m not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now – have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?

No one’s book is perfect.

Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have.

I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I’d have to say I’d like to live in the...

Our children make us so vulnerable. Our parents too, I suppose.

Edinburgh is alive with words.