Sara Sheridan

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

I am a storyteller, not a historian, and it's my ambition to create something compelling - something unputdownable and riveting - that chimes with the real history but is, in fact, fiction.

As a reader you recognise that feeling when you're lost in a book? You know the one - when whatever's going on around you seems less real than what you're reading and all you want to do is keep going deeper into the story whether it's about being halfway up a mountain in Brazil in 1823 of in love with a man you aren't sure you can trust or fighting a war in the last human outpost, somewhere beyond the moon. Well, if you're writing that book it's real for you too.

When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don__ invite someone into your world very easily.

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another.

It was clearly a lot more difficult in the field than in the office, where you could keep your distance and maintain a calculated composure. Being faced with real people was a far tougher call on one__ judgement.

I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.

I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.

In a heartbeat, he understands why religions are born on the sands _ there is nothing here for a man but his own mind.

Over the drop, a luminous pond lay below them like a pale magic lantern. It was as if the moon had plummeted into the water and smashed open. Engulfed in darkness, with only a scatter of stars above, the place felt like a bright secret _ something ancient and precious.

Maria didn__ fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.

A flock of small birds took off from the wall of the fort. They moved like a length of dark silk caught by the breeze as they headed out to sea. Behind them, the sky was the colour of forget-me-nots. The sun blazed.

There was something indomitable about Maria _ like Britannia. He__ heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said.

I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.

There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.

The world is changing and you__e only just becoming accustomed to it. You__e changing, I suppose. You__e changed since I__e known you.___ow?___ou__e come more alive.

He noticed that he felt calmer now she was here, still in that grey dress with her dowdy hat, the air around her redolent with orchid oil. Perhaps all women in England had this effect. Perhaps they all smelled of flowers and exuded a calm and measured purpose. He couldn__ remember.

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.