Music is essential to my writing process, sending me to another world, away from this one, and casting me into the moment with the characters. If I listen to, for example, ‘The Great White Open’ by Christian Löffler and Federico Albanese, or Dirty Three’s ‘Sue’s Last Ride’, I can start the process, like swimming towards the bottom of a pool and reaching a different place.

Writing a crime novel is always great fun but creating a funny crime novel is a real challenge. Killing is the easy part, making a reader laugh about it is much harder.

Hector Harrow is an almost-retired hotel concierge from Yorkshire who likes to drink tea and do newspaper puzzles in his cosy cottage. For me, he was the perfect protagonist for my murder mystery.

I never meant to be a teacher. I, in fact, categorically 100% in no absolute way wanted to teach. My complete prejudice was the result of an adult ...

My name is Shankari Nadanachandran, and I am a lawyer, a writer, and a mother of four. I am 47 years old. My body has grown older as it’s supposed ...

My need to get a sense of the physical landscape my characters have lived in and walked on is both a joy and affliction.  In the case of my latest ...

I am heavily pregnant, seven and a half months, with my first child sitting in a bathtub. The tub is in a tiny, rented cottage in the hills above F...

I am a chatty bookseller. I love to talk to customers about their choices, what they have been reading and introduce them to a new favourite book a...

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, about the highly relatable journey of becoming the 18th-century German poet Novalis. Every Penelope Fitzger...

I was in my early 20s when my partner Rob died suddenly and unexpectedly. As I grappled with the loss, I was told to be grateful for the time we ha...

 

As a phone-addict who came of age in the attention-economy, I’m painfully aware that novels demand an archaic amount of focus. Readers have to give...