No, they’re not, but people will always think they are, and there’s nothing you can do about it, I’ve learned. Along with ‘is there loads of sex in your books’ that’s the question people ask me the most! What’s strange is that there’s a received wisdom that it’s easier to write something autobiographical, ie if you just wrote about your friend and her boyfriend it’d be simpler than creating a character. But it’s much harder and it would completely get in the way of the world you’ve imagined, to have a real person bobbing up and down in the background… But I definitely write about what I know, as I think that’s the best way to get it right, even though there are situations and sequences set in the past of which I have no experience. If you believe in your characters as people in their own right, you can make them do what you want.