This book was very much a product of NaNo (the wonderful National Novel Writing Month, in case you haven’t heard of it). The initial premise for this was born largely of desperation and really came out of thin air. I had no ideas when I sat down on November 1 to begin my NaNo novel – all I had was a character called Romy, who was a property developer.

That was it – no story, no other characters, nothing. But with NaNo you just start writing, and next thing I knew Romy was having sex in a cupboard with a guy dressed as Darth Vader. Then a year later she had a baby and no idea who the father was. I knew it was daft, but it made me smile. I thought my NaNo buddies would laugh if I told them what was going on in my novel. And so they did – but in a good way.

I was busy editing Girl in a Spin at the time, and abandoned my NaNo novel without getting much beyond that first scene. But the Darth Vader idea had taken hold and when NaNo rolled around again the following year, I decided to try writing it. It’s working title was ‘Trick or Treat’. The book evolved as I wrote, which is the way all my books happen anyway – more characters appeared and a story showed up somewhere along the way. I wrote 50,000 words of the first draft and completed NaNo.