We are delighted that you could join us to talk about your new release. Could you tell us a little more about it? Wait For You is about regrets and second chances. I grew up adoring Romeo and Juliet, Noah and Allie, Tristan and Isolde. Couples where there was a sense of inevitability in their love story, yet tragedy and real life hurdles along the way. Wait For You’s main characters, Dylan and April, are my modern version of them.

We meet them three years on from a brutal university breakup. There’s still so much love and anger between them, and a row ends in a car crash that throws them back in time.

April’s trapped in a coma, reliving their romance and breakup. Meanwhile, Dylan revisits moments from their shared past that he regrets and tries to fix them. As they both fight to save their future, they uncover secrets and home truths.

How did you decide on the names for your characters and the setting for your book? I chose April, simply because she is sunshine and showers. But I’m mortified to admit that during my second pregnancy, when I was writing the book, I developed a ridiculous crush on Dylan O’Brien. I blame hormones. That was a secret nobody knew until right now!

As for setting – I went to Keele University, not too far from Manchester, so it was adjacent to something I knew well. April spends part of Wait For You in San Francisco, which I chose purely because I utterly fell in love with the city during a visit in my twenties. And Dylan studies in Rome, because I adore Italy, and needed somewhere rich in culture that a student would feel at home in.

 What is your writing day like? I open my laptop at 6am while the kids eat their breakfast. I’ll read through any chapters from the previous day, do some social media, marketing or reply to emails from my publicist. Between 9 and 5 I’m editing real life features, usually for Chat Magazine, and dealing with day-to-day Features Editor duties. Once the kids are in bed, I’m back at my laptop when most of my novel planning and writing gets done. Sometimes I’ll write until midnight, sometimes I’ll do an hour or two before the telly calls my name!

Without giving too much away, what was the hardest part of the book to write? I wrote the first draft in three months, and writing ‘The End’ after decades of dreaming of that moment was an enormous step. Yet, the story followed one linear timeline and didn’t feel as though I’d dug deep enough. Deciding to deconstruct the whole thing and throw April and Dylan in at the middle of their story was a gruelling rewrite to undertake. Especially with a newborn baby!

Emotionally, though, the mental health themes I explored were the toughest to write, because I had to draw on some very personal family stuff to get it right.

Which fictional character(s) would like to invite to dinner? What would you like to talk about? Jack Reacher. After 25 years, reading Lee Child’s indestructible drifter is like chilling out with an old friend. I’d love to meet Reacher in a diner for a bottomless coffee, burger and fries, followed by some homemade fruit pie! He’d tell me about his adventures and close calls, but I’d ask him about his love life and which of his leading ladies he came closest to settling down with.

Who were your favourite childhood authors? As a kid, I had an eclectic taste. I ate up Famous Five books, and Enid Blyton heavily dominated my shelves. But I have a vivid memory of sitting on the floor of WH Smiths when I was around nine or 10 and picking out the next Point Horror to buy with my pocket money. The storylines gripped me, especially Caroline B. Cooney’s, and I’d fly through them in a weekend. I moved on to Stephen King as a teenager – no idea why I was such a horror fan back then, as I while I still enjoy a good thriller, I haven’t read a Stephen King in decades. Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic was the first book to make me belly laugh, and she’s probably the only author I read in childhood who I still read now.

Can you tell us what you are working on now? I’ve just finished a novella, which is a follow up to Wait For You. It’s a fun adventure story with a bit of romance thrown in. I also have an outline for my second full novel in the series. It follows the romantic evolution of the best friend character, Adam, who is a love em and leave em ladies’ man in the first.

Trouble is, I’ve recently had an idea for a dystopian novel set in a future where human’s have cured all diseases. It gives me that buzzing, fingers flying over the keyboard feeling, so I might have to see where that takes me first. The joy and struggle of being a novelist is not getting distracted by a million other ideas!

About the Author

Lianne is a renowned magazine features editor for Chat, Woman, Woman’s Own and Woman’s Weekly. She has worked as a journalist and court reporter for over 15 years, looked serial killers in the eye, broken true crime exclusives, and once saved Harry Styles’ life. Her debut novel, Wait For You, is a contemporary romance, released in August 2023. Lianne was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, but now lives in Truro, Cornwall with her gamer husband, two bonkers children and her cat. When she’s not working, writing or stepping on toys, she’s focusing on her mission to complete Netflix.

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