Tell me, what inspired you to write about your latest book? I originally wrote these stories over 20 years ago to entertain my children on wet holiday afternoons in our caravan. Over the years I occasionally wondered if they might be publishable, and as it turned out they are. Do you try and read the online reviews you get on say Waterstones website? This is my first book. I have […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? It was actually a tweet. I probably can’t say what the tweet was without spoiling things, but I was sitting in a coffee shop with a notebook, doodling and playing with ideas. I knew I wanted to write something new and sci-fi-ish, but I wasn’t sure. I got distracted and went on Twitter, and saw this tweet (which wasn’t […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? The first spark for Sirens came when I was young and drunk, at a pill party in Manchester. No-one knew who owned the house and there was a lot of mystery about the man who did. There was talk of a girlfriend who’d vanished under mysterious circumstances. At the time I was reading The Great Gatsby and thought that […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? When I was eight, my lightkeeper Dad was posted to Tarbat Ness Lighthouse in North-east Scotland. This was the first time we’d ever lived actually at a lighthouse, and from the ages of eight to eleven it was the most amazing place to grow up, with wide-open spaces and rocky coves. There were even stories of Viking battles on […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? Liz & Kate: We were thinking about fairy tales, and how they could be inverted. So we came up with the idea of a male sleeping beauty. And then we decided to set the ‘fairy tale’ bit of the story in the past, so we picked Anglo-Saxon England; Kate had recently started reading about the Saxons. We didn’t want […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? The weirdest of things can spark off the idea for a story. V for Violet all began with fish and chips. Or to be more precise, with me sitting at my lap top drinking tea and eating popcorn while accidentally reading about how fish and chips were one of the few food stuffs that were exempt from rationing during […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? The very simple answer is – death row. I’ve always found the idea of it fascinating and intriguing. What do people feel while they’re on death row? What do they think? Are they angry? Do they feel guilty? Do they think they’ll get off? So many questions about it. And I’ve wanted to write something about it for a […]
Tell me what inspired you to write about your latest book? It was while I was working as a news reporter in Turkey that I met Kurdish children who had fled the battle for Kobani. Meeting these tots, that had tumbled across the Syrian border, completely changed my life. They were children, just children, and whoever’s fault the appalling civil war in Syria is – it certainly isn’t theirs. They […]