Bankrate: It seems that your husband was a champion of your fiction writing.

Barbara Taylor Bradford: Yes, always. He's not the sort of man who is competitive. He's always been a well-known producer and he wasn't disturbed by the fact that I became a very famous woman. It doesn't bother him; in fact, he has helped to make me one.

People think that he reads stuff as I'm writing, and he doesn't; nobody reads anything until the book is finished, because I don't want criticisms and suggestions until I've done it. Then you can say anything you want, but not while I'm writing it. People are not in my head and they haven't got the story in their head the way I have it in my head.

Bankrate: Did you want to have children?

Barbara Taylor Bradford: You know something, we didn't ever say, "Let's have a family," but I did have a miscarriage in my early 30s and I didn't actually get pregnant again and I never thought about it. Then one day, I thought, my God, I'm 45 years old and I've never had a baby. And you know what? You don't miss a child you've not known. I once said that to an English woman journalist and she said, "Aw, but you miss the feeling," and I said, "No, I don't think so." I understand what motherhood is. I didn't get pregnant again and what am I going to do? I'm too busy, was always too busy, to worry about it. Plus, I don't look back, I look forward, and my glass is always half-full.

Bankrate: How do you handle your investments?

Barbara Taylor Bradford: Bob does it all, because he's got a very good business head. Being a producer, he's responsible for the money, right? So he does it all. We discuss it. I have to know everything in case something should happen to him. He does the investing, with advice. He's not crazy; he's rather conservative. We have money in real estate; when we've bought an apartment, we've always sold it very well. We had a beautiful house in the country that we never went to eventually, so that we sold and did very well. He's in a lot of blue chip stocks, that sort of thing, because he's not a crazy man who is trying to make $100 million overnight. We've both been very successful. so we haven't any worries. It's not like we have to gamble. He doesn't take gambles.

Bankrate: Do you like to shop?

Barbara Taylor Bradford: I like antiques. I've always bought beautiful furniture. Having been married 40 years, I don't think there's anything I can buy anymore for the apartment. Clothes -- I've always been well-dressed; I like clothes. I don't buy jewelry for myself; Bob buys jewelry for me. But you know something? I work all the time. To write a book in one year means a lot of hours at your desk. You can't be a best-selling novelist and a social butterfly AND a shopper.

Bankrate: At 73, you have not slowed down a step.

Barbara Taylor Bradford: No, I'm not made that way. I'm very energetic; I'm still very ambitious and very driven. People who give up doing or just stop doing, those sorts of people I think age very quickly, and I think fall apart. It's like retirees; people who go to a job every day for 50 years and then one day they retire, and what happens? They die. I think most people who retire just fall apart. So I won't stop. I shall be at my typewriter when I'm 92.