I received the Sceptre 2010 catalogue last week and it was such a thrill to see The Boy Next Door right there as one of the books that will be published (February). There are some new books coming from Sceptre from literary luminaries such as Siri Hustevdt whose The Sorrows of an American was one of my favourite books last year and Andrei Makine, whose two books that I have just finished reading, Human Love and The Woman Who Waited left me stunned: the sense of having been exposed to profound emotional truths.

I'm often asked how hard it was to write this book and my answer is always that it was a gift of a book to write. The story was just there, everything happened organically: Lindiwe came as she was and she grew and evolved to be the woman she is, so too with Ian. They came to me with their strengths and foibles, as human beings, perfectly flawed. How that happened is a mystery to me and I can only be deeply grateful that these two individuals were there for the telling.