Bookmark, scrap paper or dog-ear?

 I can already see this topic from Long and Short Reviews will be a polarising one. I've seen many posts about how people hate people who dog-ear their books.

Fortunately, as I have a Kindle, it's not usually a problem. However, I do occasionally collect signed copies of books, so I have on occasion read hardbacks or paperbacks. But no, I don't dog-ear the pages. I don't have any bookmarks, so I generally use a piece of scrap paper.

Or, horror of horrors, I just leave the book open, which I'm sure does terrible things to the spine.

So what do you prefer - bookmark, scrap paper or dog-ear?

Where would you spend one day in the past?

 This topic from Long and Short Reviews was an easy one. I spend a lot of time going to the theatre and have an ambition to see every Shakespeare play in the theatre at least once (I've seen them all streamed, but have about ten left to see live). 

So if I was going to spend a day in the past, I would go to the original Globe Theatre and see Shakespeare as it was originally shown.

I would love to see how similar the atmosphere is to the current Globe, and would also love to hear how Shakespeare's language was pronounced back then. There are definitely a few rhymes in there which don't work in current idiom but may have been different back in the day.

So where would you spend a day in the past?

Thoughts on fanfiction

 I'm glad this topic came up on Long and Short Reviews, because it's one I've mentioned a few times in interviews. Whenever I'm asked how a person might learn to write, I tell them one of my best teaching tools was fanfiction. Specifically slash fanfiction.

It might not sound like a great tool - fanfiction is, by its nature, amateur, and so some of the stories posted online aren't great quality. However that didn't matter - I found them very useful. It was good to be able to read a story and analyse why I liked it or didn't like it, or how I enjoyed it but couldn't help noticing its flaws. 

This one is so poetically written I gave up halfway through.

This one is enjoyable, but uses the word "release" in nearly every sentence.

This one is obsessed with food and stops the action every chapter to rave about what the characters are eating.

As a result, when I started writing for publication I was aware of a lot of the pitfalls already, although I admit that some of them (like overusing one particular word) are still easy to fall into.

I haven't read any fanfiction for a while, but I may have to have a look - I'm sure there are lots of new ones out by now.

So how do you feel about fanfiction?

Weirdest food you love

 I spent a bit of time thinking about this one from Long and Short Reviews, because my bar for thinking a food is weird is set very high. I have a broad palate and will try anything once, so I was struggling to think of anything that I loved and yet also considered weird - the few things that I did feel were weird (like jellied eels and pigs' trotters) I also didn't like.

So the best I could come up with was that I like to mix different cuisines within the same meal. I've often been called weird for that, because for many people if they're eating Thai, then they're eating Thai for the whole meal. I, on the other hand, am quite happy to start a meal with larb, move on to fish and chips and cap it with a glass of plum wine or apple ice cider, thereby going round the world in one evening.

So what's the weirdest food you love?

Describe a perfect weekend getaway

 I surprisingly had a bit of trouble with this topic from Long and Short Reviews. My husband and I go away for the weekend a few times a year, and where I want to go can vary wildly depending on my mood. Pretty much everywhere we've been has been perfect at some point.

For instance, last weekend we popped down to London as I had tickets to the Globe and he wanted to visit the RAF Museum. While I was busy watching King Lear he roamed around the capital taking photos of things and then we met up in the evening to visit our favourite restaurant. It's all good.

We've also been to Rome, the Lake District and Scotland for weekend getaways, all of which I would do again - Rome in particular is a beautiful city, I could have stood at the Trevi Fountain all day - and I would love to go back to Amsterdam one day.

However, at the moment my idea of a perfect getaway would be Iceland. It's not cheap, but I would dearly love to see the Northern Lights.

So what's your idea of a perfect weekend getaway?

Character in a book you'd love to meet and why

 This sort of topic has come up a few times on the Long and Short Reviews list, and I always find myself turning to Jane Austen and the Brontes for inspiration. So this time I decided to go a bit closer to home and pick one of my own characters.

As you might imagine, I spend so much time in my characters' heads that I would have to like being there, so there aren't many that I wouldn't want to meet. Possibly my arrogant medium character Reed James from I Heard Your Voice and its sequels would be one to avoid. But one I would particularly like to meet would be Azure Wilder from Photograph.

Part of this is practicality - Azure is extremely rich and lives in an American theme park, so you're already guaranteed a good time. However, as well as being fun, Azure is also caring and thoughtful, very much the type of person who would see to all your needs and keep you entertained with sparkling conversation.

So which character would you like to meet?

Have you met anyone famous? Who?

 This topic from Long and Short Reviews depends entirely on how you define the word "met".

A couple of soap operas are filmed in our area, so I've certainly seen several actors around town. I saw Stephen Tompkinson having dinner with his family in the same restaurant we were in, and encountered Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan in a theatre. However, they were out in public and I didn't bother them - as an autograph collector I make it a rule never to bother a celebrity when they're off the clock.

I also encountered Ricky Gervais out jogging in Central Park once, but again I let him go straight past me. I doubt he'd have appreciated being spoken to.

I got autographs from Darren Day and Philip Schofield at a Radio One roadshow in a theme park once, which was certainly fun, but extremely fleeting.

However, the one celebrity I can say I've properly met was Lee Otway of "Hollyoaks" fame. My brother-in-law knew him and invited him to a party I was also at. I can't say I spoke much to him - he was much more interested in the food and waitresses - but he did get us into the VIP room at a nightclub afterwards, so I can't complain!

So have you met anyone famous?