Sylvian Hamilton has never been in the CIA, owned a racehorse, met the Aga Khan – or even Prince Charles – won the lottery, walked to the North Pole or climbed Mount Everest. She has however managed to stay married to the same man for forty years, raised a wonderful son and daughter and countless cats, had a farm in Wales, an antiques shop in Scotland, and for several years was a bookseller specialising in Sherlock Holmes. None of these occupations made her rich.

In her teens she wanted to be an opera singer but life got in the way. She spent five years in Canada lurching from one disaster to another and still has occasional nightmares about crossing the Atlantic in mid-December.

She wrote The Bone-Pedlar because it’s the kind of book she enjoys reading but seldom finds. Technophobic, she approaches her computer with trepidation every morning but couldn’t do without it. If she doesn’t write something, however little, every day, she gets crotchety. If the next morning she re-reads what she wrote the day before and doesn’t like it, everybody better duck!