I suppose I should have had more doubts about my ability to do the job, but I went into it, when I think about it, in a spirit of recklessness. I'm sure all the journalists on the magazine had many doubts and worries about what this strange woman from another industry would do to their magazine, but in fact, fortunately, it all turned out very well. I think after the twins were born it wasn't so much a matter of management as of survival. For a period, she even did my shopping. On a personal level, I'm lucky in that I do have a lot of physical stamina, and I'm good at compartmentalizing.
Life is more settled now.
I had quite a few books in print by then, and they were doing well enough for me to afford to write full-time. I found that I shared this love with a lot of my women friends. It was our favorite form of leisure reading. It was fascinating to me that it seemed to be typically women who enjoyed this genre and wrote in this area. When I was still at Angus and Roberston, in the mid-eighties, I thought I might write a Ph.D. thesis on this theme.