Tell me what inspired you to write your debut novel? The characters? The setting? My debut crime novel, The Three Dahlias, started with the idea of three actresses, all of different generations, who’d all played the same fictional detective in various movies/tv adaptations, having to work together to solve a murder. Obviously I needed a […]

Tell me what inspired you to write your debut novel? The characters? The setting? A clock. When I came across it in a shop in a back alley in Istanbul, I was intrigued to discover that it was made in Leadenhall St, London, in 1752. The clock cast a spell over me, making me want […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children? Kick-starting a child’s passion for reading or writing is definitely a huge inspiration for me. I was book-obsessed when I was younger so the thought of being that author for a child is something that drives me to write and research my stories as best as […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children?Honor is dyslexic but always loved stories and so for the whole of her childhood, we were reading together and listening to books too. There’s a freedom and a joy (or at least a hopefulness) about children’s books that is irresistible. More directly, our first books (the […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children? As a child, I loved books. The wonderment, the characters I met, the places I travelled to. I have beautiful, fond memories of books and the magic of stories from my childhood. As I writer, I’ve always wanted to create books that provide that same wonderment […]

What inspired you to write crime set in Turkey? I’ve always been a crime fiction fan. But when I wanted to read something set in a country I’d been going to all my life, I couldn’t find anything at the time (1990s) except the 1950s espionage novels of Eric Ambler. And so, first of all […]

Tell me what inspired you to write The Mystery of The Colour Thief? I was volunteering as a school governor at an inner city primary school, where the headteacher had recently introduced an in-school counselling service. She was telling us about its positive effects, and mentioned a pupil who had come to her office saying […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children? Two things really.  First, I have two young children myself, 8 and 11 now, and over the past few years I have really enjoyed getting back into children’s literature and reading them stories at bedtime.  There’s so much excellent new stuff nowadays! (although I also read […]