I was asked to answer a few questions for a live French radio interview last week - five or six questions in about five minutes was the idea. I thought it was an interesting test of both the journalist and the author. Which questions would he choose? How would I answer them?

Well this is how it went (in translation - you can find the original version here):

Question: Kate Mosse, you have been extremely successful with your novels Labyrinth and now Sepulchre. What is your recipe for success?

Reply: What a difficult question. Do you always ask it? I'm afraid I don't have a recipe, exactly, but I do know that, when I go to festivals, readers always tell me they love the locations in Languedoc and the strong female leading characters. And, it goes without saying, a fast-moving adventure story. In the end, I write books that I would like to read myself.

Question: Can I ask you why you set your novels here - I mean in France - and why especially in Languedoc?

Reply: I'm sure you know, I was a novelist already before I wrote Labyrinth and Sepulchre - they are my third and fourth novels - but it was only here, in the southwest of France in the Occitan lands that I so love, that my imagination truly blossomed. For Sepulchre, it was in the ancient woodlands surrounding Rennes-les-Bains - so ancient that they must conceal forgotten secrets don't you think? Perhaps even ghost or demons too, because there is such a strong folklore tradition in the area.

Question: You also had or perhaps received a parallel inspiration - I'm talking about the music of Claude Debussy, a composer who even exists within your story. So tell me, why his music and which of his works in particular?

Reply: When I was a teenager, I played the violin and the piano a good deal, as a soloist and in an orchestra. In fact, it was on tour with the local youth orchestra that I discovered Chartres - a key location in Labyrinth - the twin city of my home town. And out of all that experience, it was always the music of the end of the 19th century that most spoke to me, moved me – and above all the French compositions. So in Sepulchre, I had the idea of making a connection between the music and an imaginary Pyrenean estate - the Domaine de la Cade - near to Rennes-les-Bains. But because Debussy was a real person - and quite a recent one - I was reluctant to have him appear as himself in the novel, so we just hear his piano playing through the wall or hear snatches of his letters ... As for which works, it has to be his evocative impressionistic pieces like The Sunken Cathedral and The Sea.

Question: Is musical tradition important to you in other ways?

Reply: Good heavens, yes. To start with, I still play - although very badly - and I am still fascinated by the centuries-old musical tradition which means that what we play today is more or less what was being played a hundred years ago. And, of course, the heroine of the contemporary part of Sepulchre, Meredith Martin, shares this respect for musical tradition. It is, after all, her research into biographical details of Debussy's life - in particular to do with his first wife Lilly - that brings Meredith to southwest France.

Question: Finally, you have mentioned folk lore and ghosts. Do you really believe in any of that?

Reply: Well, I wonder what you would think. Perhaps you don't know Rennes-les-Bains, an important village for the Romans, the Celts, the Visigoths, to the 19th century visitors to the thermal baths - but then somehow allowed to become a kind of ghost town. For me, it's the sort of place where things - important events - ought to happen. If you go walking in the dark woods, rich in jade and amber, if you visit the spring known as the Salt Fountain or the standing stone called the Dead Man, you cannot help but hear echoes of its adventurous past. It is hard to define exactly. The title of the new Fred Vargas novel is Un Lieu incertain - perhaps I would call it An Ambiguous Place ....

Send off: Kate Mosse, thank you very much.

Reply: It's been a pleasure.

Perhaps the Sepulchre too is an ambiguous place ...