2. Favorite childhood memory involving books?
Every Saturday morning I would climb into bed with my dad and he’d read to me. School stories from his childhood – Jennings and Just William – are particularly memorable – he was wonderful at doing the voices, but also popular children’s books of the time such as the Moomins and the Borrowers, and classics like The Railway Children and The Hobbit.

3. Did you want to be an author when you grew up?
I always wanted to write. There were novelists in my family and my father was a poet as well as a teacher. When I finished my A-levels I started to train as a journalist but I had no stomach for hard news, so went to college instead. Afterwards I worked in public relations, which also involved writing, and I’ve freelanced as a cricket journalist too.

4. If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?
Loyal, hardworking, imaginative.

5. Have you ever met anyone famous?
Having worked in the media I’ve met lots of famous people. Many cricketers, of course, but also musicians like Billy Joel, and having worked for the BBC all sorts of actors and personalities. One claim to fame is having been on the set of Eastenders!

6. What is the first book that made you cry?
Bambi. Yes, I do mean the book not the film. My mother took it away from me, I was so upset.

7. How long, on average, does it take you to write a book?
Now I write full time it’s a great deal quicker. I try to target myself with at least a thousand words a day, so my first draft takes about three months. But then I will spend the same amount of time editing, polishing and improving. It’s the research that is hardest to quantify. I wrote my first dual timeline last year and the historical part took far longer than I anticipated because I found myself having to delve into even the most everyday of things, like how letters would have been sent in Cornwall in 1816.

8. How do you select the names of your characters?
Generally with great difficulty. The main character normally names themselves as they’re forming in my head, as Rachel did in Endless Skies. I took Jonathan’s name from an exhibit in Lincoln Museum because I wanted a local surname. And Esther is in so many ways my late mother, so I gave her the name on her mother’s birth certificate, although she never used it.

9. If you were the last person on Earth, what would you do?
Break into a library and read. Or at very least make inroads into my TBR 😉

10. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Make your book as good as it possibly can be. Don’t rush for publication; it’s highly likely your first book won’t make it, but it doesn’t mean the next one you write won’t. Just remember that once a book is out there it will form part of your reputation forever.

11. What book do you wish you had written?
The Time Traveler’s Wife. It opened so many doors for me about what is possible in fiction if your characters are strong enough.

12. What is your favorite genre to read?
I guess it’s the more literary end of modern romantic fiction, because although I’m a sucker for a great love story I prefer them in an interesting wrapper. Authors like Elizabeth Buchan, Julie Cohen and Tracy Rees are firm favourites.