Q: Beast is unlike anything else I've ever read. Where did the idea come from?
A: I wrote some short stories prior to writing Beast. one about a girl planning to murder her boyfriend with a savage creature she had in a cage, and the second a ghost story about a boy in a foster family. These ideas came together to make Beast

Q: Where did Stephen's voice come from, and did you have any trouble writing from his perspective? Are there any parts of you in Stephen?
A: My parents fostered teenagers (mainly boys) throughout my childhood, so I think that helped to imagine where Stephen was coming from. I did worry for a while that Stephen ought to be thinking more about sex -- someone who read an early draft of the manuscript and said all seventeen-year-old males are far more preoccupied with sex than Stephen. Eek! So I had to interview various males and ask them about this. I got different answers each time!

Stephen is far braver and pushier than me. But like Stephen, I do sometimes make badly thought out, spur of the moment decisions.

Q: Without giving too much away, did you have to do very much research about the beast at the center of the story?
A: I had pictures of these beasts plastered over my walls. I rented films which included them. I corresponded with an Australian wildlife professor. I read all I could about them. I purchased small plastic replicas and distributed them about the house. So yes! They really are terrifying creatures, and very clever. My wildlife expert told me they would do whatever it takes to survive...

Q: Your bio informs us that you grew up on a small, isolated farm. What was that like?
A: It's a high altitude farm , which can be bleak in the winter and fairy land in the summer. I spent a lot of time on my own, thinking and plotting. My parents live in a massive five-hundred-year-old farmhouse, and at one point I had a tiny attic room which led to a small bedroom, which led off to a larger room, all for me and not ever disturbed by my parents. I could fill these rooms with projects, like rotting experiments, music equipment, and homemade bad art. There was a lot of space to escape, endless fields and woods. I can only dream of that sort of space now.

Q: You also have had an eclectic mix of jobs. Did any of those inform the story?
A: Stephen had to have a stinking job, I've had many. One of the first was cleaning the canteen in a cider factory, and pulling bindweed from the verges of city slipways wasn't much fun either. But my husband, Dan, had the most horrible job, working in a meat factory over one summer whilst he was a student. He was a vegetarian for six years after that...This is why I made Stephen work in one. Heh heh.

Q: One of the most compelling things about Stephen how he's trapped by a secret he feels forced to keep. Even if a reader isn't keeping the same kind of secret as Stephen, he or she will no doubt be able to relate. When you were a teen, was there any secret you had to keep that you felt trapped by?
A: Aha, secrets like that are best kept . . . secret. (My parents might read this!)

But I did have a close friend who didn't like to eat. My teacher asked me to keep an eye on her, but my friend told me she was fine and hated all the interference. She said that as a good friend I should support her . . . and then she supposed I wanted her to be fat! I didn't want to run to the teachers every time she chucked away her sandwiches, it felt like spying, but she grew more skinny and bad tempered and I was stuck in the middle. Eventually she sorted it out in her head herself.

Q: Your novel has gotten an inspired response on both sides of the Atlantic. What has it been like to see your novel go into the world? Do you hear a lot from readers?
A: It’s been utterly mad. I still don't really believe it. Though it's very exciting to receive all the different versions of Beast. It has exceeded by far all my expectations. I feel like I've blagged it!

I do get a trickle of feedback from readers, which is also mad. There are actually people out there reading this thing!

Q: What writers inspire you?
A: Mervyn Peake, David Almond, Susan Cooper. Margaret Mahy. I'm reading lots of teen fiction at the moment to see what I'm supposed to be doing. I loved Helen Dumore's Ingo. I get dispirited by endless doom and gloom in teen fiction. There needs to be some fun.

Q: What music inspires you?
A: I'm currently rotating The Nerds, Nirvana, and Morrissey’s You Are the Quarry. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” first came out when I was about sixteen and it still makes me forget I am a thirty-one-year-old, heavily pregnant mother of one, and it makes me jump around. (Sad, I know)

Q: What's your next book about?
A: Berserk is about Chas, a fourteen year old who is writing letters to a prisoner on Death Row because he thinks it would be cool to get letters from a killer. When the killer is released he comes looking for his pen-pal...