Readers' Questions

Readers' Questions about One Moment, One Morning

How did you come up with the idea for the novel?

I was sitting on the train, commuting from my home in Brighton to an office in London, flicking through a magazine, when suddenly, a man on board collapsed, seriously ill. The train was stopped and we all had to get out at a station en route. To get into work, I ended up sharing a taxi with a group of women I’d not met before. A few weeks later, I lay awake unable to sleep, and remembered this event, and thought it would be an interesting premise for a novel. I started writing the very next day, but rather than simply tell the tale of strangers in a taxi, I twisted events to my own ends. The result was the plot of One Moment, One Morning - the story of how one incident on a train impacts on the lives of three different passengers.

What made you want to tell this particular story?

My aim was to write something that I hope is sparklingly readable, yet doesn’t shy from difficult emotional issues. I felt I had something fresh to say about three themes: bereavement, alcoholism and hidden sexuality, in the context of friendship.

What attracts you to telling a story from different points of view?

I like the way each character’s individual experiences of events can illuminate and affect the others, thus increasing our understanding. I guess I’m also impatient, and different perspectives keep a story moving. It means I never get bored whilst writing – and if I’m inspired and excited, hopefully my readers will be, also. Different perspectives is a format I used in my first two novels, The Other Half and Getting Even, too.

This novel feels very different from your first two. What led you down this path?

I finished my second novel, Getting Even, several years before One Moment, One Morning, and my life changed a lot between those years. Then I was single, living in London, now I have a partner, we live in Brighton, and Tom’s son, Sebastian is with us at weekends. With hindsight, my first two novels were somewhat pigeonholed as ‘chick lit’, and although I have reservations about that label, nonetheless I wanted to shake off the association. So I killed someone off on the second page of One Moment, just to insure no publisher could stick a glittery pink cover on it!

I guess I wanted to raise the bar for myself: I’ve also read a lot in those intervening years, and learnt from other writers. I like to be entertained but also touched and gain greater understanding when I read, so that’s what I tried to deliver. I also felt I could push myself style wise: improve my metaphors, kill cliché, and so forth – be a more ‘literary’, perhaps – though I don’t want to pigeonhole myself again. My aim is to be the very best writer that I can be at any one time.