Is that what made your work controversial?

‘A lot of the fuss about my earlier books was just because the press hadn’t really kept up with what was happening with fiction for young people. It all came as a great big dirty surprise: instead of Ratty, Moley and Fluffy Bunny, it was all about junkie whores.’

How has YA changed since you started?

‘Enormously. It wasn’t even a genre really … and now of course it’s the boom area. Someone was telling me that in the big bookstores in New York they put all the YA stuff at the front because that’s what everyone’s reading.

It really has changed, after Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, although I suspect some of those things are more crossover. A lot of people get big crossover sales, but my books are more specifically for teenagers.’

What do you think about the idea of ‘crossover fiction’?

‘It’s so mainstream now. I remember a friend describing Twilight as “Mills and Boon for my generation.”

A lot of crossover fiction has been usurped by adults, but if you write stand-alone YA books it can still be difficult.

What’s wrong with adults reading crossover fiction?

There’s nothing wrong with adults reading crossover fiction. It’s wrong when people start writing for the adults reading it.

Then who is writing for the teenagers? Having said that, I don’t think that’s actually the case right now.’