My father was a soldier and the longest we stayed in any one place was 2.5 years. I lived in Berlin, Hong Kong and different parts of England, always the outsider. I explored this lack of roots in my autobiography 'How Blue is my Valley' as well as the ways in which Wales became my adopted home, followed by a love affair with the south of France, where I now live. Perhaps it's because in compensation for my childhood that places are so important in my books and are real places, usually ones I know intimately.

I wrote a tedious novel in school when I was 11 called 'Jill's Stables'. If I'd finished my work before the other children, I was allowed to continue with my masterpiece, which ran to several chapters. The teacher's only comment, preserved in red ink, was 'This would be better with more illustrations'.

I started as a poet in my twenties and turned to prose at 40. That was a big year - I became a Headteacher, wrote my first novel (not counting 'Jill's Stables') and gave up sugar in hot drinks. You can guess which was hardest to do! In 2001, a highly respected Welsh Press, Gomer, accepted my novel and I couldn't believe I'd 'made it'.

When a reader tells me how much s/he liked something I've written. I've published 15 books, and it doesn't matter whether it's a recipe for goat cheese, a prisoner-of-war story, a poem or a love story, the thrill for me is the same when I get positive feedback. It's as if my books live again each time someone reads them and I re-live the experience of writing them. I need the creative act itself but when someone reads and enjoys my work, that is the fulfillment.

Through online happenstance I met and trained with top French dogtrainer Michel Hasbrouck and translated his book 'Gentle Dog Training'. I'm part of the online dog world, with a special interest in Great Pyrenees and one particular true story of a rescue Pyr haunted me and demanded to be written. True dog stories expressed through all that I'd learned from Michel turned into 'Someone to Look Up To' and as I saw the story from the dog's viewpoint, that's how I wrote it. It felt odd when I finished the book and stopped being a dog, and my favourite review was from the reader who told me, 'By the end of it I WAS a dog and nearly barked at the postman.'

My desk is at one end of the living-room, facing a window onto the garden and the Provencal hills behind. The collection of oddities on my 'inspiration window-sill' includes a flamingo feather from the Camargue, an antler and a skull found in our orchard, and my grandfather's microscope. I change around the pictures clamped in his little scientific bench clamp that has two clips and a magnifying glass. At the moment I have a picture of a humming-bird and a Victorian postcard showing women crossing an Alpine bridge across a ravine, in floor-length skirts and fussy bonnets.

I love the freedom, was tired of trying to find a publisher with each new book and I hated the rejections more than I loved the acceptances.

Someone who lives my book as s/he reads it and tells me how much s/he enjoyed it. I think my husband is the only person who has read everything I've written and even he doesn't like all of it - poetry worries him :)

I've almost stopped the research for the third 12th century novel about Dragonetz and Estela. You could research forever but at some point you have to say 'Enough!' and start writing. It's 1152 and as always I've discovered some amazingly strong women that I'd never heard of before. Stephania/Etienette of les Baux and Queen Petronilla of Aragon will definitely figure in the story.

I design my own covers. I'm a photographer with a portfolio at www.istock.com/jeangill and I usually use about 6 photos to make the cover art. I will use my own if I have something suitable (as on 'Someone to look up to) or by the ones I need from istock. One of my conventionally published books had the same jacket design as another book because two publishers had chosen the same image. I really dislike that! I love designing covers and I like knowing mine are unique.

At the moment I like 'Don't be sad it's over; be glad it happened'. I keep quotations on my inspiration windowsill and at one time I had a quote from French singer Francis Cabrel

'Faut pas dire à qui je ressemble,
Faut dire qui je suis'

My translation - 'It's not about who I'm like, it's about who I am.'

I don't mind being likened to others but my own aim, as a writer, photographer and human being, is just to be me.