Bridget McNulty is a passionate writer fascinated by why people act the way they do. So fascinated, in fact, that she’s written a book about it. It’s about other things, too, but the undercurrent is all about figuring out why we do the stupid things we do. Especially when they relate to love.

But it’s not a romance! Not even a little bit. Manly men can read this book with no shame. It’s about Durban, in the hottest summer ever known, and about relationships and sex and (green) food and cups of tea and the sea and whales and strip-clubs-turned-bars and undertakers and toenails and parent-child relationships (or the lack thereof).

It’s kind of about all the things I love, although I don’t particularly love toenails. I do love tea, and tea parties, and baking. And swimming in the sea (although I don’t do that so much now that I live in Cape Town). Food of all descriptions. People.

Shall I share a little secret? What I do is, I listen to people talk when they don’t think anyone’s paying attention, and I steal little bits of conversation and little personal character traits and small things that make them who they are. And then I give them to my characters, a whole big mix of different traits that somehow makes sense.

It’s kind of like baking.

Where did all this start? Probably when I first learnt to write, and I spent my afternoons sitting on big concrete steps watching my brothers play rugby or soccer after school. I’d be bored, so I’d find some paper and crayons and write myself little books. I refined this art in the USA, where I got a Creative Writing degree from Franklin and Marshall College in the USA.

And now? Now I work for Real Simple magazine as the features writer, and carry a little notebook around on the off-chance that someone says something I want to steal.