Ask Our Authors - February 2025

Happy Publication Day everyone!

Our second Publication Day of 2025 brings a whole new collection of exciting stories, from a wonderful collective of talented authors!

To introduce them, we’ve devised a fun feature – Ask Our Authors – where we send all our newly published writers the same simple question to see how different each answer is…

For our February authors, we asked them: to coincide with Valentine's Day, what made you fall in love with reading?

Here are their answers…

“My siblings and I were encouraged from a young age to explore the world of books. Our home was located walking distance from Singapore's National Library, and so, every Saturday, together with all the other the neighbourhood children, we would make a bee-line to the library. There, we'd indulge in listening to storytelling sessions and browsing through the bookshelves. Mum, a school teacher, encouraged us to borrow a book a week and in the process, we developed a love and habit of reading - or was it the habit that developed first and later led to the love for reading? Not so sure! It could well have been the endless boredom of teenage years and that reading offered a kind of escape valve.”

Jag Thind, author of 67 Sophia Road; House on the Hill

"During the Second World War, my parents, and particularly my grandmother, installed into me the importance of education, of which reading is the cornerstone. I fell in love with reading when my mother first read to me the classic, Oliver Twist, when I was about six years of age. I quickly graduated from this to the comics of the day, The Dandy and The Beano ...... quite a change, but I realised then the importance of reading for your imagination.”

Alfred Wilmot, author of A Life Too Far

“All you need to know about me is that everything begins and ends with story. We are made up of stories and we understand society through stories. Reading for me has always been an opening into other worlds and a chance to experience life from someone else’s perspective. While I love the escapist element, I also love to read to understand life better. It's the closest thing we have to living more than one life. Who doesn't want to experience that?”

Sharon Dempsey, author of After the Party

“My answer to “what made you fall in love with reading” would have to be, the feelings I had during my first book series. I was so gripped and emotionally involved within the storyline that it truly made me feel like I had been there myself and experienced all of the characters experiences. It’s what made me fall in love with reading and writing.”

Demi Connor, author of At This Very Moment

“What makes me fall in love with reading would be being able to form a picture in your mind of the characters and what they're going through - for me, my favourites are fantasy and mystery. It's also a lot of fun to know how the story will end. If it's a series, it makes it all the more fun.”

Erin Tunney, author of Beast Heart Series: The Wild Shepherdess

“Since it is not only Valentine's Day, but Black History month in the United States, Toni Morrison made me fall in love with reading. Her grasp of reality, understanding, and character development, has always awed me. Her fictional novels are heart felt and deliver a powerful message. Sula is my favorite story. This is the tale of two young women who live through the struggles of black America in a small Ohio town, while one of the women gets out of poverty the other does not. The story is filled with secrets, judgment, and a crime, but I don't want to spoil the ending. My favorite line is in reference to the gold under a black man's skin. Everyone should read Toni; she is amazing. I can only aspire to make people fall in love with reading the way I did with her books.“

John Robert Davidson, author of Being Different is Painful

“Suffering from the flu during an absence from school I read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, my first grown up book. I was 16 and viscerally lived every line sharing Raskolnikov's adolescent fascination with the hero Napoleon. Appalled by the robbery and killing of the old money changer but guiltily willing him to get away with the murder - until finally, sharing the catharsis of atonement. I suppose that duality of feral as opposed to moral nature remained an unconscious influence when writing my book.”

Keith West, author of Caravaggio’s Boy

“I have always enjoyed reading - when I was younger, like most kids do, I had quite a good imagination. But the book that made me fall in love with reading was probably when I first read Eragon - learning that Paolini had written it at young age made me really want to be an author. I loved the world building and how relatable the characters were. I wrote Curse of Knowledge when I was in university. I had always wanted to see a story where the main character wasn’t poor or in poverty and the empire wasn’t evil, and from that idea the seeds were planted, and the idea grew.”

D. I. Young, author of Curse of Knowledge

“I was a post-WW2 child in the burnt out city of Hamburg. We street children played in the pot-holed streets outside our flats with puddles of water, stones, paper ships and stone marbles. We searched for beetles in the hedges when it grew warm. I was bored. When I started school I became mesmerized with letters, how they made words and sentences and turned into whole stories full of wonders.”

Greta Sykes, author of Eve Meets Dante

“I fell in love with reading because it unlocked worlds beyond my own—history, mystery, and the thrill of the unknown. From gripping crime fiction to real-life accounts, books have been both my escape and inspiration. The power of storytelling - the twists, dilemmas, and search for truth - keeps me turning the pages. Now, that passion fuels my own writing: weaving suspense, history, and intrigue into every story I write.”

Ralph Surman, author of Framed In Blood

“My dad, an English professor, had a huge collection of books - Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and of course, the works of Shakespeare. One summer vacation, me and my siblings got hooked on reading. We would pick different books and tell others if it was good or not. After that experience, we visited the local public library for more and then raided far-away branches in search of even more - our young minds had found something new. I don't think we understood even a fraction of what we read then, but it was thrilling to imagine a world away from ours.”

Ram Halady, author of Last Bench

“My mother made me fall in love with reading. She would read to me every night in bed when I was growing up: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Secret Garden, any works of Judy Blume, The Giver, Little Women - all the greats. I think those books powered my imagination, to where it was possible for me to dream enough to be a writer.”

Caitlin Davis-Ruiz, author of Love Me Ugly

"I think what really made me fall in love with reading was the way books allowed me to escape into different worlds and perspectives. Growing up, I loved how a story could take me places I’d never been and introduce me to people I’d never meet. There’s something magical about how a well-written book can make you feel so connected to characters, emotions, and ideas, even when you're alone.”

Sarah Hepworth-Dodds, author of Nursing Through a Pandemic

“I came from a laboring class of loggers, fishers, and mink ranchers—an entanglement of hard work and sacrifice. We were not readers. In college I won a university award for my first story. This opened a world of reading and writing and understanding the strange motivations people have for getting what we get. Like Atwood said, ‘In the end, we all become stories.’”

Tim Hurd, author of Renovation: Stories About Starting Over

“What made me fall in love with reading was how books brought magic to life. As a child I wanted nothing more than for unicorns, fairies and magic to exist. So, when my parents read me books, it gave me that magic that I wished for.”

Rue Willow, author of Sands of Time

“My first memory of reading for pleasure was as a child reading Biggles books. Over sixty years later I can still recall the thrill of sitting by an open fire and opening a new book knowing you wouldn't be disturbed you for an hour or two. I still feel that excitement today and indeed occasionally gaze at my Biggles collection and re-read a story or two.”

Grahame C. W. Howard, author of Seeking Fleur

“I was so blessed growing up in Seattle in the 1970’s to be one block away from the public library in the district of Ballard and then when we moved to the house I grew up in for the next 11 years, the Northeast Seattle branch of the library was literally down the alley from our house. Even as young as five or six, my parents trusted me to walk down to the library, find the children’s section, and come home with my arms laden down with books - what a gift that was! My uncle bequeathing a bunch of ancient Oz books to me also helped.”

Dean Backus, author of The Deep End of the Pool

“Reading books enlightens my imagination and often drives me into another world. Reading a good book brings me joy, transports me into laughter and sometimes tears. Reading a book is educational and encourages me to respect different languages and different cultures.”

Juliet Calver, author of The Little Ant

“I have always been in love with reading. My early memories are, that from a very young age, I was reading true live adventure stories in Dutch. Automatically, reading led to writing.”

Pieter Woittiez, author of The Marquitas

“Falling in love with reading for me was an easy step. Reading any good novel irrespective of the genre takes you to places and situations that transforms and educates your mind and emotions. Something I have tried to bring into my own work. My own novel caused me to research places, cultures and situations that I would never have engaged with during the course of a normal day and thereby became a form of therapy for me, something away from the terrible things that are happening in this world"

Berkeley Fenne, author of The Rectifier

“Since childhood, reading has taken me to other worlds, and I still enjoy that experience. Nothing compares with a good book, a cosy armchair and a log fire on a rainy winter's night.”

Sandra Fairhall, author of Three Pennyworth

“I grew up in small-town Scotland. While it was idyllic it could be boring for a child. I fell in love with books and would read one a day. When I was a teenager, I got glandular fever, and I spent years in bed. My reading habit was the thing that got me through and added some much-needed excitement to my life. I believe in the power of reading more than anything. We can live thousands of lives through books. They also teach us empathy. Here is to a love of books!”

Catherine Yardley, author of Where the Light is Hottest

“I fell in love with reading when my Dad would take me to the library on Saturdays and allow me to check out as many books as I wanted. I felt like I was getting an endless supply of presents every week. Writing our book Why Is This So Easy For You? with my daughter, Lizzy, has also been a gift and we are thrilled that we get to share it with our readers.”

Susan Senowitz, co-author of Why Is This So Easy For You?

Thank you to our authors for taking part in this feature!

Make sure to take a look at our newest titles in our “Latest Releases” category today!

Happy Publication Day everyone!