Then I went to Estonia to a UNESCO conference to read an excerpt from one of my books and I fell in love and suddenly everything – I mean EVERYTHING – changed. I started living big chunks of time overseas, I had a live-in partner, and then I had a daughter. And all of a sudden I was back to fitting writing in around everything else.

In a funny way, though, I really do miss those wonderful years when all I did was write, and I miss the deep immersion they allow pretty badly sometimes. But I find this life of having to fight for time to write more invigorating and ultimately satisfying. It felt like it was almost too easy for a while. Looking back, I was living this idyllic unreal sort of life where I was detached from reality, not just distracted from it. It was maybe a bit bloodless. But now I am in the midst of life, red in tooth and claw, and when I write, I still hurl myself down the mountain face, hoping not to fly off a cliff or smack into a tree. And life seems painfully, sharply beautiful and precious again …

You divide your time between living in Australia and overseas. How does this ongoing change of environment influence your writing?

It strips you down. It takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to be vulnerable. It makes you see and feel and hear more vividly. And you see and hear and experience things you would not experience any other way.

You’ve created so many memorable characters throughout your writing career. Which of your many characters burns brightest in your mind and why?

Wow, now that is the toughest question because you always feel like you are betraying one character when you name another. I actually can’t do it. I can say why I loved a few of the characters, though the truth is I could tell you why I loved at least one and usually more characters in every book I have written. But let’s choose a few. I like Elspeth because she is like another me. She is the inside me. She is the skin I slipped into when I was fourteen and wanted to think about things, and she has grown with me, though not as fast. She is powerful and prickly and assertive and tall and lean – all the things I am in my imagination. She is brave and truthful and all the things I would be if I were better. She is me as a hero.

Nissa is her in urban guise, but the main character in The Gathering, and the one I like most, is Nathanial, because unlike Nissa he can be soft. I love Billy Thunder because he is the kindest, sunniest, most sheerly good character I have ever created. I love Maruman because of his madness and his sheer bloody-mindedness. I love Mr Walker because he is a pernickity little scold. I love Fork because, in the most true and metaphysical sense, it is shaped by the lives of the people and creatures who inhabit it. I love Little Fur for her gentleness and Crow for his rudeness and, oh, I love Sorrow for his great, terrible mythic sadness.