|
Sunday Times, 16 November, 1997
Another thing we found invaluable during prohibition in India, and that is still necessary in Pakistan, is to take your own drink. Bets (her sister) and I would have a bottle of rum, which we would mix with mango, orange or Coca-Cola. If we ran out of drink we would have to go along to the government-licensed places and register as alcoholics in order to get another bottle.
About writing:
Mollie writes her books in pencil "It has to be a round one, or I get a groove in my index finger which hurts like hell."
She says that her best work comes in the evening "I'm like a stone-cold engine in the morning."
On why she wrote under different names: "I used M M Kaye for the mysteries and Mollie Kaye for the children's books. If you're writing about rabbits" she explains, "readers might not take you seriously with a large historical romance under the same name."
On explaining to Somerset Maugham that she sometimes spent an entire day bogged down on one sentence, his reply was "My dear young woman, that's the only thing you've said to make me think you may be a novelist one day."
On why she stopped writing the Death Walked In… books "it was getting a bit footsore."
Mollie looks back on her life with heartfelt gratitude "I've been jolly lucky and have had a marvellous life."
|
|
