One Minute With: Sadie Jones

(Rex Features)

Where are you now and what can you see?

I am in my cupboard room/study. I can see the closed shutters to the street ahead of me. I keep them closed while I work, so that I can concentrate and not do a James Stewart in Rear Window.

Describe the room where you usually write

The clothes cupboard is behind me, the window ahead, piles and of books and shelves of files to left and right, and the cat, dog and printer somewhere near my feet.

Choose a favourite author, and say why you like her/him

My favourite author as a child and teenager, and who I still re-read now, is KM Peyton. She writes very truthfully; sometimes I'm not sure if I've actually done things, or just experienced them in her books.

What are you currently reading?

Ali Smith's collection of short stories, The First Person. Her writing is brilliant and charismatic; I admire her enormously.

What distracts you from writing?

I don't get distracted until the weight of other things left undone finally tips the balance; my mind is flooded with calls, bills, supermarkets, letters, and I have to stop and sort things out.

Which fictional character most resembles you?

As I child, I related strongly to Sara Crewe [the eponymous novella on which Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess is based] – she is described as "odd", is fierce, often alone, and I aspired to her romantic intelligence and stoicism.

What are your readers like when you meet them?

Just like normal people – only they know a lot more about me than I do about them.

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

My father.

Sadie Jones's 'Small Wars' is published by Chatto & Windus