Q&A with Baby Dear author Linda Huber

It gives me great pleasure 

to welcome Linda Huber to The Crime Warp.  I have been a fan of Linda's books for a while and with Baby Dear being hot off the press last month, it's great to have pinned her down for this Q&A.  (especially as she's come all the way from her home in Switzerland to be here) I'd like to say we're outside sipping Pina Colados but we're stuck indoors drinking coffee and eating Tunnocks tea cakes- aw well could be worse I could have forgotten the tea cakes.

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Baby Dear

Liz: Tell us a bit about your Baby Dear, 

Linda.

Linda: Baby Dear tells the story of three women: Caro, whose greatest wish is to have a baby, and Sharon, who’s eight months pregnant and unsure if she wants to be a mother. Then there’s Julie, impoverished single parent of a baby girl. Ordinary people, leading ordinary lives – until Caro’s husband Jeff discovers he’s infertile, and can’t give her a baby the usual way…

Liz:  Could you describe how the germ of an idea develops into a full-blown novel?

 Linda: I always start with an idea – here, an infertile couple 

want to have a baby. Then I think about the characters. Who are they, these people? How do they live, what are they passionate about, what are their hopes, their ambitions, and how far will they go to achieve these? Who do they love, and what are they afraid of? Once you have the characters and the idea, the book almost writes itself. Almost.

Liz: Is there a subsidiary character you have created and are particularly fond of and why?

Linda: That would have to be Philip, one of the characters 

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in my second book The Cold Cold Sea. Poor Philip – he’s such a nice guy, but he lands in an impossible situation, and then he does a really, really terrible thing. Betrayal of the worst kind – but I still love him.

Liz:  Where is your favourite place to 

write and why?

Linda: Two years ago we moved into a lovely flat by woods in N.E. Switzerland, and my desk sits at the window in front

of floor-to-ceiling trees just metres away. It’s fascinating, seeing how they change according to the light and the seasons. When I pause to have a think there they are, shades of green and sun-kissed. Or dripping, or waving in the wind with autumn leaves swirling. Love it.

Liz: I'm not surprised you love it.  very inspirational.  Is there a particular book you wish you’d written and why?

Linda: A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes. It’s an 

old book; I read it at school. It’s about a family of children who stow away on a pirate ship by accident, which sounds twee, yet it’s anything but. The story is told mainly through the eyes of eleven-year-old Emily, and it’s one of the most chilling books I’ve ever read. The ending still makes me shiver.

Liz:  Now for one of my favourite questions.   If you were to play Snog Marry Avoid using crime writers and characters from crime fiction who would you A) Snog B) Marry and C) Avoid… and why?

Linda:  Snog: Elizabeth George’s Lynley, 

because he’s dishy and rich and kind and clever and interesting and a brilliant detective and… 

Marry: see Snog (at this point I have to interject to let you know Linda's positively salivating - who'd have thought someon could like Tunnocks Tea Cakes quite so much?)

 Avoid: Hannibal Lecter. There’s something about cannibalistic serial killers that’s just off-putting, imo. 

Liz: Not sure I get what you mean about

 good old Hannibal.  Who or what inspires you to keep writing?

Linda: Ooh, tricky. I keep doing it. It’s addictive, and 

completely selfish – I do it for me. I love writing books. My kids think it’s a tiny bit cool to have a mother with a collection of her own books on the shelf and that’s nice, but honestly, if the entire publishing world was to vanish forever tomorrow, I would still write.

Liz: I completely get that- It's like a guilty pleasure (a bit like Tunnocks tea cakes I suppose).  Which fictional hero or anti-hero would you like to meet and why?

Linda: I would love to meet Val 

McDermid’s Tony Hill. He’s so

clever and so gloriously 

damaged, a great creation. We could put him into the Snog category above, actually, and shift Lynley to Marry. That would be perfect.

Liz:  Yeah, with Tony being impotent he wouldn't be much cop in the marriage stakes would he?   Could you describe your next project using each of your five senses?

Linda:  I see a child who wants her family to be happy, I hear the pleading of a woman for help to die. 

I feel the vibration as

their world rocks beneath them. I taste the strawberries the child turns to for comfort, but they are sour in her mouth. I smell her fear. 

The title is Deathtime, and it’s 

about two neighbouring families and two death wishes.

Liz:  Wow!  Sounds like a fab story.  Have you ever thought of setting a book somewhere exotic so you could visit that place or perhaps live there for a while? Where would that / will that be?

Linda:  Somewhere hot, or hottish. Greece, perhaps. 

I’ve been to a few of the islands and to Athens, it’s a country I feel at home in. I think it’s important to have the smell of a place before you set a book there. 

My books tend are all set

in the UK so far; they tend to follow my friends about the place. Must persuade someone to move to Greece…

Liz:  It's been an absolute joy to have you here today.  Here take a few tea cakes with you since you're so fond of them.  Safe journey home!

Find out more about Linda on her Amazon page