THE mood of novelist Jodi Picoult's latest book tour of Britain is much more relaxed than her last visit to these shores just 12 months ago.

Sure, there's thousands of books for the multi-million-selling US author to sign.

There's still a multitude of questions to answer from devotees of Richard and Judy's Book Club - who voted her book, My Sister's Keeper, their favourite in 2005.

Plus there's a chock-full calendar of appearances, including two in the Glasgow area.

But her last UK tour to promote 19 Minutes - a fictional account of a high school shooting spree from the perspective of a bullied adolescent - came just after the Virginia Tech massacre when a lone gunman killed 32 people in the worst school shooting in US history.

Our interview last year was cancelled and a note posted on Jodi's website in sympathy for the victims.

Thinking back to that episode makes Jodi understandably sad, yet the moral fire in her belly that has fuelled 15 ethical-dilemma-based page-turners is stoked as lessons still haven't been learned.

"I know how incredibly hard being in that situation is, and how long it's going to take them to heal physically and emotionally," says the mum.

"However, I could have told you it would happen again - and will continue to happen in America.

"I think we do a too good job of armchair quarterbacking with 20-20 hindsight, trying to figure out what went wrong in the aftermath and not quite as good a job addressing the problem leading up to it, which really is bullying and intolerance at schools."

Jodi's book, 19 Minutes, is now taught on the curriculum in more than 100 school districts in the US, a remarkable feat when you consider its adult language, violence and sexual content.

And Jodi regularly leads workshops with schoolkids all over the world focusing on bullying. Last year she spent time at Hillpark Secondary School in Glasgow's South Side where she was introduced to the Scottish phenomenon of neds'.

"Bullying happens everywhere," says the former English teacher and graduate of Princeton University.

"The names of the cliques differ from school to school, but there will always be differences and there will always be groups.

"The question remains, how do you make sure that each of these groups respect each other?"

Jodi has never shied from controversial issues, such as rape, kidnap, child abuse and teen suicide.

It's a contrast to the bubbly, genial woman talking to me.

And it's a world removed from her rural New Hampshire office at her 11-acre colonial-style family residence.

Born on Long Island, New York, Jodi's mother was a nursery school teacher while her father worked on Wall Street.

She married her college sweetheart, Tim Van Leer, and they have three children, Kyle, Jake and Samantha, aged 16, 13 and 12.

True to form, Jodi's latest book, Change Of Heart, is taking on two typically big-hitting themes: religion and capital punishment.

"In America, it feels like you could fold the country in half along the faultline of religion," says Jodi, who describes herself as spiritual rather than following an organised faith.

"All of the hard political issues, like abortion and gay rights and capital punishment, seem to depend on what you believe in your own faith.

"Why did religion, which was meant to unite people, become so incredibly divisive?"

The research for Change of Heart was two-fold - the first element meant coming face-to-face with death row inmates in an Arizona prison.

What she witnessed made her blood run cold.

"People in other countries are flummoxed to understand why America, this superpower, this first world country, still has capital punishment," she says.

The second phase of research for the book - which "is a nod to Stephen King" - saw Jodi poring over the Gnostic gospels (a series of documents about Jesus' teachings dismissed by the early Christian Church) to create the character of Shay, a death-row inmate charged with murdering a little girl and her stepfather.

Shay begins performing miracles in prison and wants to donate his heart to the sickly sister of his young victim after he has been executed.

In the same way King's work has become the subject of movie adaptations, Jodi's work is also filtering on to the big screen, with a Hollywood production of My Sister's Keeper currently in production.

The book was inspired by Jodi's experiences of hospital appointments with Jake who had 10 operations on ear tumours.

In the film version, Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric play the parents trying to have a designer baby to help save the life of their older child.

Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack play the lawyer and judge respectively.

Jodi says:"The director is making changes I don't agree with but we, as novelists, have no control." Jodi Picoult is at the Royal Concert Hall on Friday at 1pm (tickets £5/£4 from 0141 353 8000) and at Eastwood Park Theatre in Giffnock on Sunday at 3pm (tickets £6/£4 from 0141 577 4970).