Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke.

People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to... especially by someone who is a good reader - it does help them to get better.

My mother had multiple sclerosis.

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

She had always called me, after those strokes. Those strokes were all documented. Then she had a major stroke just a few days after she signed, and she has never been home since.

My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.