Today I am delighted to be hosting a Q&A with Catherine Ferguson, author of Christmas at the Log Fire Cabin.
Q&A with Catherine Ferguson:
1. Can you in five words describe your book to those who haven’t read it?
Funny, festive, family, fabulous food!
2. Was there anything in this book that took you by surprise?
There are always some plot twists that don’t reveal themselves until part way through the writing. Towards the end of Christmas at the Log Fire Cabin, I needed to move the action along but wasn’t sure how best to do this. Not wanting to give anything away, a well-known Christmas party game came to mind that solved the problem very well indeed!
3. Do you have a favourite moment in the book?
There’s a moment on Christmas Day when the heroine finally stops being a mouse and roars instead. I really enjoyed writing that scene.
4. Name the best book you have read in the last year, your favourite book and the book that is currently at the top of your TBR.
I recently read Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling and loved it. My favourite book is Marian Keyes’ The Other Side of the Story. And next on my TBR pile is The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (because I’ve just visited Amsterdam and am ashamed to say I’ve never read it).
5. Can you tell us a little bit about what you are working on at the moment?
Yes! It’s a story about a girl who needs to rescue the family home and opens a café in a very unusual place in order to do so! Some tales just seem to write themselves – and this is one of them. I hope my enthusiasm comes across to the reader.
6. Did you do any research? Or did anything influence you?
I took all of my inspiration for the setting of Love Among the Treetops from a wonderful place called Alnwick Garden, in Northumberland, close to where I live. It’s got the most magical, fairytale treehouse restaurant and of course, I’m having to pay repeated visits there in order to get the story exactly right!
7. Can you give any advice for those wanting to write?
I love the W Somerset Maugham quote: ‘’There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no-one knows what they are.’ I’d say there’s no magical formula for how to write a book. It’s a hard slog at times. You just have to keep putting down sentence after sentence, and eventually you have a very rough first draft, which you can then start to polish. And you must never give up. Many writers persevere for years before they finally get a book deal. It took me five years to get an agent and another year before Avon said yes!
8. And finally is there a question that you have always wanted to be asked? What is it? And what would your answer be?
The question I’ve always wanted to be asked is: ‘Would you mind if we made your book into a movie?’ And my answer would be: ‘Not in the slightest. Where do I sign?’
Leave a Reply