Tanith Lee — British Writer born on September 19, 1947,

Tanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of over 90 novels and 300 short stories, a children's picture book, and many poems. She also wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7. She was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award, for her book Death's Master... (wikipedia)

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.
At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.
No one is ever ordinary.
I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.
Pirates have always fascinated me.