I'd love to be able to say I write my horse and pony stories in a stable, but the truth is it isn't a stable any more because we converted it into the farm office 11 years ago.

At the time I'd just started writing and publishing my own books, and I needed somewhere dry to store them together with mountains of farm paperwork. I furnished the office with reclaimed pine, and it looked lovely for a few days, but soon it was invaded by boxes of books, display boards, bubble-wrap, rolls of brown tape, envelopes, weighing scales and all the other stuff I needed for storing, marketing, packing and dispatching the books myself.

Luckily for me, and the farm office, Orion Children's Books took me on in 2011. I rewrote the Katy's Ponies trilogy and A Stallion Called Midnight and I've nearly finished writing a brand new trilogy called the Horseshoe trilogy.
There are now three large wooden bookcases against the far wall where all the boxes and clutter used to be. There's one for non-fiction, another for fiction and a third for children's books, old and new. Many of these are horse and pony stories. Since my childhood I've collected enough of them to fill several shelves, and I still re-read my favourites, like Silver Snaffles by Primrose Cumming, Moorland Mousie by Golden Gorse and countless books by KM Peyton.

Horses and ponies have always played an important part in my life, and we have several here on our Exmoor hill farm, from a herd of free-living Exmoor ponies to a Shire horse, Sherman, who's retired now but worked hard for us when we were running a horse-drawn tours business. The horses and ponies I've known throughout my life often give me ideas for stories. In Joe and the Race to Rescue (the final part of the Horseshoe trilogy) there's a Shire horse called Sherman, for instance.

I was so delighted when Orion Children's Books took me on that I named one of my Exmoor colt foals Orion. He's two years old now, and you can follow blogs about his training on my website.

I love my office, which is lucky because I seem to spend a lot of time in it nowadays, either writing or doing the farm accounts and record keeping. It's warmer and quieter than the farmhouse, and yet I don't feel cut off. I can look out onto the courtyard, and there's usually something going on. For company I have Ben, my collie, who lies patiently under the table and waits for any sign that I'm about to take a break. Ben keeps me from seizing up when I'm writing, as he needs regular walks.

When I'm writing and thinking I turn off the telephone link and put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, because if I'm interrupted my ideas seem to fly out of the window. The only trouble is that horses can't read...