Kia ora,

This is a treat, an author I don’t know yet! Can’t wait to read all about her. 
Let’s get into those questions (I’m quite nosy so buckle in):

Who are you? What makes you tick?
Hi! I’m nosy too, so I’ll be asking right back. And I love to chat to people, so… you asked for it!
I’m Jinny and I live in Ireland, although I was born in England. I’ve lived here for twenty years, but England will always be home. I love reading and writing, but I also teach ESL and my mornings are filled with chatting to Chinese children. Teaching reading and writing helps me stay fresh in my own writing, I think! Plus, my students give me heaps of ideas and make me laugh.

Favourite genre/s to read or write? 
I have to pick one??? I read across most genres although I can’t do horror since watching Pet Sematary at fifteen. I love a good psych thriller, or a courtroom drama, but I read almost anything. My favourite book ever is Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus although generally I don’t read much fantasy. I mostly write Cozy Mysteries at the moment, because I have two series that I am totally invested in and can’t stop, but I’ve also written three more commercial/literary standalone novels. My cozies are the British kind of cozy mystery, so they have a bit more grit than the American cozies – think Richard Osman rather than talking cats! Because that’s what I’m writing, it’s also a lot of what I’m reading right now. When I need a change of scene with writing, I enter competitions such as the brilliant Writer’s Playground contests, where you get given a set of instructions and a short deadline to complete a story.

Please tell us about your latest work: 
I’m currently, and insanely, writing both Book 4 in my Jess O’Malley Irish Village Mystery series (A Deathbed of Roses, out later this year) AND Book 2 in my new Mrs Smith’s Suspects series! But I’ve reached the point where I need to focus fully on Deathbed as the deadline is looming. I love losing myself in Jess’s world – this series is set in a rural Irish village, uncannily similar to the one I live in, only with more murder, and the world feels very real to me. Once I get lost in the writing, I sometimes forget I’m not really there. I’ll go out with my own dogs and be surprised when I remember a certain house, or street, or person isn’t here after all, because they only exist in the book!

Do you like chocolate fish? 
Erm. I like chocolate. I like chocolate bars, chocolate buttons, chocolate cake… but what exactly is a chocolate fish. Bear with me while I pop off to Google. BRB.
Erm… what is that pink stuff? It looks a bit like a Thornton’s strawberry pig, only in fish-form and I like Thornton’s strawberry pigs, so… But honestly, I prefer cake to chocolate. (The pink stuff is raspberry marshmallow.)

What’s your main character like? 
My main character from my Jess O’Malley series is exactly like me, only younger. She lives my life, in her small rural community, walking her dog for miles and being generally nosey. She’s more social than I am though – I’ve turned into a bit of hermit lately!

• Would you go to the pub with them?
  Yes, but we’d probably prefer a nice cup of tea and slice of homemade cake, made by her neighbour Linda.
• Would you have them over for dinner?
  I’m not great at cooking for other people, so I’d go to hers! She’s a more confident cook than I am. It might just be pizza and salad, or we’d get a takeaway from Mrs Hui at the Chinese in the next village.
• What music do they listen to?
  I’m an eighties girl, but Jess is a decade or so younger than me… actually I just realized I’m so old it’s more of the ‘or so’, so she mostly listens to nineties/early 2000s music but tends to listen to the radio more than specific music. 
• What type of car do they drive?
  Erm… I think it’s red. I should check this. It’s smallish, too.
• Are they a series character?
  Yes, and so far she’s stomped her walking boots through three published novels and one coming soon, plus a couple of short stories.

What piece of advice would you give a new writer? 
Write. Read. But also, write what you want to write. You hear all this advice about ‘write to market’ or ‘write like such and such’ or whatever, but I genuinely think that once people start writing what they think people want instead what comes naturally, they lose the authenticity of their voice and the writing stops being so believable. I want to read something the writer has ENJOYED writing, not something that feels forced.

What part of writing do you find the hardest? 
I generally find writing quite easy, but the problem comes when I stop. I’ve had a rough time this year with bereavement, family ‘stuff’, and being sick through several weeks of the summer, and I haven’t really written much since the end of June (it’s the middle of August now) and I’ve been finding it very hard to refocus and get settled back into my writing. I find having clear deadlines helps, and a good night’s sleep!

Have you ever had lolly cake?
Erm… you what?  *Googles again. BRB.
Oh. That’s disappointing. It had ‘cake’ in the title so I thought it would be good, but nope. I don’t like coconut. I’m not sure what fruit puffs are, but they sound a bit weird. And I’m coeliac, so I’d have to adapt it anyway. It does look pretty though, I think I might try smashing up double lollies and mixing them into cake mixture, and see how that turns out. I’ll take your NZ lolly cake and come back at you with my English-Irish invented version…

Pantser or outliner? And why?
Pantser! I never have a clue where I’m going. It always makes me laugh when readers tell me they knew early in a book who the killer was – I’m like, “How? I had no idea until I got to the end!”  Of course, with writing a series, there does need to be SOME planning. I have a timeline, and maps, and characters profiles and the like, and if I’m ahead of myself enough I love to add hints in the earlier books about things or characters that will come in later books. I do usually have a rough outline in my head of some key points, but with this current book, A Deathbed of Roses, I actually still don’t know what’s going on… I know it revolves around the Tidy Village contest, but I don’t know who will die or how or why or where or who kills them. I need to work it out VERY soon! I do usually end up drawing out a mindmap at some point during each book, which helps me bring things together, but more often, I just take my dogs for a long walk and let it fall into place in my head as I walk.

Do you write in silence?
I usually write in silence, but if anything, I’ll have the radio on quietly. It’s more like white noise though and I don’t really listen to it.

Do you like to listen to audio books?
I listen to audio books when I’m gardening – we have 2.5 acres of wildly overgrown land, with a polytunnel for vegetables, and one small part of the garden that I try to manage properly. I also listen while I’m out walking, but like you, my brain wanders and I end up replaying the same part over and over. Some books are better as audio though – I’m currently listening to the radio adaptation of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, and the Botswanan accents really bring it to life. I’m making sure to ‘audio-ize’ my Mrs Smith’s Suspects series, as the main character in this series is visually impaired so it was important to me to make it as accessible as possible for anyone who is also visually impaired. I have a wonderful narrator who is so perfect!

Have you ever visited New Zealand?
No, but I have a story about someone from NZ who I count as a very close friend even though I only met him once! About seven years ago, my daughter, then 14, and I were travelling home from the UK to Ireland on the ferry and we got chatting to a complete stranger, who we then invited to stay with us. He came to stay. When my daughter and I got off the ferry and my husband met us, the first thing we said was ‘we met a strange man and he’s coming to stay,’ and my husband said, ‘fine,’ as if it was the most natural thing. We exchanged a couple of ‘Are you an axe murderer?’  ‘No. Are you?’ messages with the ‘stranger’ over the couple of days after we met, and then he came to stay for a couple of days. It really was the most natural and obvious connection, and it was one of the best experiences of our life. He’s a photographer and took some amazing photos of my daughter fire-dancing in front of a ruined abbey at the dead of night. I know without shadow of doubt that if I, or my daughter, or my husband, rocked up in NZ, we’d stay with this guy and it would be as if we’ve known each other all our lives. I think people have become so afraid of strangers that they often forget that our friends were strangers before they were friends.

Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, or some other type of pet?
Not guinea pigs. Everything else. Currently: two dogs, two cats, 16 hens. Coming soon: two kid goats. Historically: horses, ponies, a donkey, sheep, more dogs, more cats, more hens, rabbits. We also have wild bees in our roof. I’m so delighted they survived the winter and stayed around! Oh, and we have owls in our trees, which is very special. About that guinea pig. My sister had one once. I hated it!

Where do you write? 
Usually in my study/office, where I also teach my ESL classes. Now my children have grown up and left home, we have empty rooms, so we converted the smallest bedroom to a work space for me. It has a husband-built desk that takes up one wall and curves around. The walls are a sunny egg-yolk yellow and even on the dullest days (looking at you, miserable rainy Irish summer) it’s bright. It’s also often the only room I heat when I’m here alone all day, so it’s like my own little cave.

Thank you for playing along!

You can learn more about Jinny from the following places:
Facebook
Website
Claude, Gord, Alice, and Maud:
Diet of Death
A Hover of Trout:
A Wake of Buzzards