Anna Silk

When you get pregnant, you start reading pregnancy books. Everything has been pretty textbook. It's amazing how they can say, 'This week, this might happen,' and it kind of does. I had typical nausea the first trimester, which was no fun. And extreme tiredness.

I had a book that was given to me as a kid that was called 'Faeries.' It was this dark, sinister book with pictures that used to scare me because they were these creepy little creatures. But, I was always really drawn to that fantasy world, more than a sci-fi world, in terms of outer space stuff.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.