The first book I remember was a picture book. I can't remember if it even had any words, but I do remember the illustrations which were pictures of a "Mrs Mouse" figure tucking up her little ones at night and having some sort of adventure. I remember sneaking a look at it in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was maybe four years old at the time. I don't have the book any more and I'd love to know what it was. There was something about it that stuck with me, though, and maybe that's what started my love of reading - the discovery that you can be taken outside yourself by a book that you just don't want to put down for the night!

To be honest, I don't remember the first actual story I read, as I became a keen reader and read anything I could get my hands on. Early books that made an impression on me, and which I returned to time and again, included C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, Tove Jansson's Moomin stories and short stories by Joan Aikin.

With great apprehension! Until I had to think about the covers for my own books and stories, I'd never appreciated how difficult it can be coming up with the right image. Ideally, I'm looking for something which captures the reader's interest, while offering a fair indication of the nature of the story. For short stories, I tend to stick with a fairly simple cover: title and author's name. Lazy, perhaps, but sometimes simplicity seems best.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis - for the feeling of an adventure within an adventure and journeying bounds of the known world (in this case, Narnia).
Persuasion by Jane Austen - for the humour, the subtle character assassination and the period.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - for the poetry and imagination of his writing.
The Stand by Stephen King - for the breadth and depth of the whole adventure.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - for the clarity of writing and the story itself.

Do I really have to stop there?

I have a few favourites that I keep returning to, "comfort reading" I suppose: Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Jane Austen, for example. I like things that are quirky and offer a bit of magic in the everyday world - Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale, for example. I've also read my fair share of classics, including Dickens, the Brontes and George Elliot - I think any writer has an enormous amount to learn from them in terms of composition, use of language and sheer persistence in telling a good yarn.

A Kindle.

I've never been comfortable with the direct email route, so I tend to stick to things like Twitter and Goodreads, where there's an opportunity to link with readers and other authors. I also have my own website, www.afmckeating.com, where I've posted free samples of my work.

It's a basic IKEA model, situated near a window so I can watch the clouds go by.

I grew up in a shipbuilding town in the North of England. When went to school, it was accepted that you either carried on with your education or went into the shipyard. There didn't seem to be many other options. So it was almost a given that I would leave at some point, at least if I wanted to go away to university. I suppose that coloured my outlook in lots of ways that I didn't realise at the time; the feeling that I wouldn't be "here" forever and that sooner or later I would move on. I'm not sure how that's influenced my writing. Judge for yourself!

I wrote on and off throughout my childhood, as other interests waxed and waned. I won a creative writing prize when I was 18, but as I was just going off to university and discovering life as a student, I never really thought of building on that early success. I started writing again in my late twenties, when I produced my first novel. It languished in a serious of boxes as I moved around. In fact, I don't even know if I have it any more. I started again in earnest some years later, starting with short stories but always going back to novels. There's something about their length and the scope that provides to develop a story, which really appeals to me and which I feel most comfortable. Not that you should ever underestimate the challenges and discipline involved in writing successful short stories!

I'm working on a sequel to The Accidental Career of Hilary Darke. It's set a few years after the events of the first book and Hilary hasn't lost any of her dark side. As writers, we're often warned against writing sequels, but I felt there was still a story to tell. I don't feel as though I've quite done with Hilary yet. Or maybe she hasn't done with me!