Writing and book reading are in the blood. My great grandad used to travel around Turkey carrying a trunk full of his beloved books and during WW2, my Dad wrote 40 page letters in French to my Mother from the desert! So he might well have got round to a novel or two if he had lived long enough. I gave up writing for years but have now resurfaced in my later life and published two books, written six. My daughter who is in publishing helps edit the books so they're not just my vain outpourings. I simply want to share my tales with those few who care about it. It's good to have readers otherwise I would be like an actor with an empty auditorium. My first novel The Long Shadow was wriiten in 2005 and published in the States long before Victoria Hislop turned her eye on Greece! Strangely I also wrote a story about Spinalonga, the leper island off Crete, in the 1980's but she beat me to it on that one as I never did get round to publishing it. Maybe some day. It's a totally different story to The Island. :-) Interesting how writers can approach a subject from quite different angles.