1)  Congratulations on your debut novel! You mention the idea for The Midnight House came into your head years before you wrote it.  What was the image in your head that started it?

The Midnight House started with a figure that appeared out of nowhere – a young woman standing by a lake. She held a battered suitcase, and wore a coat that was far too big to be her own, though the ruby ring on her finger suggested wealth beyond her attire and her blonde hair was swept up in a way that told me she lived in another time. I knew then that she was an aristocrat, and what’s more, I was sure she was running away, but when she turned to glance in my direction, I saw not the slightest tremor of fear. I’d met Charlotte Rathmore, and years later – when I moved to County Kerry and found my setting – I finally reached out to take her hand and let her lead me away.

2)  You were born in Australia and have lived all over the world before settling in Ireland. What is it about County Kerry that appeals so much?

Almost eight years ago, I sat in a little hire car with a map spread across my lap, the window ajar so that I could taste the chilled Atlantic breeze, when my husband paused on a descent on the Ring of Kerry. I looked up, and the view took my breath away. Fingers of purple rock reached inquisitively into the thrashing Atlantic, and not far behind them a magnificent house – old and empty – stared at us, a tattered sign hanging from its gate: FOR SALE.

We ended up buying that house – a large restoration project – and two months after we’d arrived, we were shivering around a pot-belly stove, wind howling through the rattling windows, wondering what we’d done. Beside us was a to-do list daunting to even the most avid DIYer, and before us, a view of the emerald valley beyond. A blue tractor, one that we’d seen up and down the boreen a dozen times (though we’d never met the farmer), pulled up to the house and, without ceremony, upped its bucket. It was gone before we could react and we ran down the front steps to discover a pile of timber, cut and split. When I remember that moment – ivy wound around those logs – it reminds me that the best gifts aren’t always wrapped in ribbon and paper.

So, it was the dramatic landscape that drew us here in the first instance, but by the time our renovation was complete, we’d discovered a community, an extended family, and it bound us irrevocably to County Kerry.

3)      The Midnight House is a big family saga, spanning the years between 1939 and the present day, with a family tree at the front (I love a book with a family tree - it promises so much intrigue!). How did you come to envisage the Rathmore family and their riveting story?

To create the Rathmore family, I researched 20th century Anglo-Irish families, not just in Kerry, but in the counties beyond. I knew I needed to explain how Blackwater Hall managed to survive when so many Big Houses were burned to the ground during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. When I discovered several accounts of benevolent landlords; those who had mortgaged their estates during the famines to pay for their tenants’ passage to America, and how – down the generations – the communities had never forgotten this, I knew I’d discovered a starting point for the Rathmores. I liked the idea that Charlotte’s ancestors were generous; a trait she was destined to inherit while it bypassed her father and eldest brother, Hugo. Families are like that – no generation is the same, and while what went before is part of us, I believe we can all forge our own path.

4)      The history of Ireland is so layered, tragic, inspiring and emotional.  Does it captivate you as much as the landscape?

My fascination with Ireland’s tangled and complicated history is very much expressed in The Midnight House through the character of Jules. Our fashion sense might be markedly different, but like me, he’s a blow-in (the joke here, by the way, is that unless your grandparents are buried in the local graveyard, you’ll always be a blow-in!) and his outsider’s eyes gave me the chance to communicate some of the wonder I experienced when I first arrived.

I do, however, believe that history and landscape are entwined so tightly that they are almost impossible to separate. Here, mountains, rivers and the shoreline defined where people settled, and their skills and land have been passed down the generations, as have the stories, so that much of the oral history and folklore I’ve learned has been gleaned from neighbours and friends. What a place! Did I mention I love Kerry?!