Are book characters your friends?

Try this. Find yourself some time (easy if you're a freelancer like me), but find it somehow - on a holiday, a weekend, a night when the TV doesn't go on. Find the time, and then spend AT LEAST an hour with your book. This will ensure that you're immersed in it. Totally. And it has to be a fiction book - non-fiction simply doesn't do it, sorry boys!

You will find, I guarantee it, that you start to find that the characters in these books become your friends.

Trust me.