I first wrote this book twenty two years ago. I had been travelling around the world, and had married an American, who lived in Orange County, California. He worked away a lot, and as I knew no one, I wrote the first version of this story, using my travelling experiences to decribe the rainforests and deserts in my fictional world. I then went on to live an extremely crazy life, adopting three children and having two of my own. So it ended up in the bottom of my drawer. We moved to the UK, where I ran a catering business for sixteen years. I separated from my husband, and in 2007 I ended up be...