Q1. Tell us about your latest book.
The Ice Cream Girls, my sixth novel, is about two women who were brought together in their teens by a tragic set of circumstances that made them infamous, were then separated and are now about to be reunited. They should be friends but in reality they have a lot to dislike each other for. The book is also about the secrets we keep and why we feel compelled to keep them.
Q2. The themes in 'The Ice Cream Girls' are quite strong, and obviously something you would have to research heavily before writing about them. What sort of research did you have to do before you wrote the book, and what effect has it had on you?
Each book I write needs a unique type of research (oohhh, I should really grown-up and serious, don’t I?!) but with all of my books talking to people about their experiences and reading their stories in their own words is the most important element of research. With most ‘issues’ shall we call them, you find that the same things are repeated over and over.
Every one of my books has had a different effect on me. With The Ice Cream Girls, I came away from the book feeling very strongly about the treatment of prisoners and how the survivors of domestic violence are viewed. I always held strong views about those subjects, but when you hear these stories over and over again, you start to feel as if you’ve lived it. I’m incredibly lucky that I’ve never been on the receiving end of domestic violence or been to prison, but with the research I did, I came to realise that almost all of us are only a few wrong decisions away from being in that situation. That’s a humbling – and ever so slightly scary – thought.
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