Carole Matthews laughs — a lot. During our rambling chat that takes in everything from South Africa to rubbishy sci-fi movies, that self-deprecating laugh is never far off. Nor is the obvious enjoyment in everything she does, be it travelling (with the likes of China and Nepal knocked off the list, Peru's Inca Trail is up next), watching TV, singing karaoke or writing. A former secretary, beauty therapist and TV presenter, this romance novelist's life is probably as full as those of her heroines.

I have very, very structured days. I visit MySpace and Facebook from about 7 until 8 in the morning and I chat to all my readers there. I have quite an interactive website so people can contact me quite easily. So I do that first thing, have some breakfast, read the paper, write from 10 o' clock to 1 o' clock, an hour for lunch, write from 2 o' clock to 6 o' clock. And I do that five days a week. You have to. If I'm churning out that amount of words I have to have a really structured day and I don’t really deviate much from that.

I've tried to do the whole writers thing and have a lovely summer house in my garden all kitted out for writing but I just can't do it. I just need a brick wall, a computer and the radio on full blast. Otherwise I just get too distracted. I could never have a lovely house overlooking the ocean because I'd never get any work done. I'd sit there and stare at the sea all day.

I'm an avid fan of James Patterson books, and he writes really, really short chapters, really staccato. After my first few books, I decided that's what I want to do — I want to write really short crisp chapters. The majority of my readers I know are going to be busy mums, commuters, people who don’t really have that much time to read. And so that was a deliberate decision to do short chapters and emulate somebody else's style in that.

My writing is very much me. One of my favourite books is 'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger. I couldn't write like that. I love historical fiction, by Philippa Gregory in particular, but I could never attempt to do that sort of thing. With the time scale that I have to produce my current books I don't have the luxury of really sitting back and thinking: "I'd love to try something else." I'm very happy in the genre that I am but I am under a lot of time pressure. Maybe it will come to the point where I'm not doing two books a year or I decide to take a break a few years down the line and think of what else I'd maybe like to do. But at the moment I love what I'm writing too much.

Myspace has been fantastic for getting in touch with readers. Feedback is normally nice and being an insecure author it's very good to start the day with 20-odd people telling you that they love you; it's very motivating. A lot of people contact me about my books, and then I get quite a lot of aspiring writers asking for advice. I also get quite a lot of marriage proposals from gentlemen called Ron in California. So there is the slightly odd side to it as well.

I love TV, I'm a child of the TV age. I was brought up with one eye on the telly, the other one on my homework, typical woman doing my multitasking. I tend to feel guilty sometimes about watching trash TV because my entire social life stops when 'X Factor' comes on — it's a really trashy talent show.

I'm so good at karaoke. I do a very good 'I'm Every Woman' and I do a wicked 'Tainted Love'. Or I think I do. I'm not quite as good as I think I am. When we went to China, we met some friends who were working out there in Hong Kong. And they take karaoke really seriously over there, don’t they? And we went to one of these karaoke hotels where you have separate rooms and then very seriously you stand up and perform your karaoke and everybody claps very politely at the end. I did 'D-I-V-O-R-C-E' which was one of my finer moments that evening. But at home we all get drunk, stand on the table and hope we don’t fall off — so a very different cultural approach to karaoke.

I'm so grateful I've had a lot of men who treated me badly because I've got so much material now. I've had a very checkered love life — a lot of my writing comes from personal experience. There's way too much of me in my books really — a lot of it is drawn from experience. I've been divorced twice, I've been with my partner Kevin now for nine years so I've got a lot of things to draw on and even if it's not a situation I've particularly been through, generally having been down there and low, you can empathise with what people are going through. I do think that as a writer you need to have lived a bit.

When I was a beauty therapist I trained at a place called Champions which was a very glamorous, glitzy health spa back in the day. Sometimes the word would go round that George Michael was in the Jacuzzi and we students in our white uniforms would try and sneak up there to get a glimpse of him — before we knew he was gay, we all wanted to marry him.

I know this sounds a bit cheesy but I feel everything I've done has been working up to this point. I think I am now where I'm supposed to be. I've enjoyed this job so much and I can only produce so many books because I enjoy the writing part of it. I hope, as long as my readers continue to buy them, that this is where I stay.