Tell me what inspired you to write?  Have you always been a writer? I’ve always been a writer in my soul, I’ve always needed to say things in writing in order to order my thoughts and feelings.  The search for the right word, the right expression, feels like drawing back the darkness a little bit, […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children? I started writing when I was a child, so naturally carried on in that genre. (I write for adults too.) Somebody once described my writing as playing with a blend of the familiar and the strange, staying right on the ambiguous edge between them, and I […]

Tell me what inspired you to write for children?I did an adult book about football and went into schools. Children told me what they like to read and I gave those books a go and realised that was what excited me most. How hard was it to get your first book published?Very. 20 years of […]

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 […]