We interviewed the lovely Claudia Carroll last year when her novel Personally I Blame My Fairy Godmother came out, but with a new novel on the horizon - the wonderful Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? - we were thrilled Claudia agreed to do a second interview with us. I love this interview, and I hope you guys do too, Claudia is such a lovely author to interview!

1. Describe your latest novel Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? in five single words!

The first pure romance I’ve written, as opposed to romantic comedy…ooops, I think I just went over the five words!!

2. Can you tell us anything about your next book? Does it have a really really long title yet?

I’d be delighted to! The book I’m working on right now is called AN ACCIDENTAL LOVE AFFAIR and it’s a romantic comedy about a newspaper editor called Eloise Elliot who uses a sperm bank to become pregnant, then gives birth a year later to a beautiful little girl, Lily. The story kickstarts three years on when Lily has started play group and is starting to wonder why every other kid on her class has a Daddy and she doesn’t.

Lily grows up a gifted child, and pretty soon Eloise herself becomes initially interested and then obsessed with finding out who her baby daddy really is. If you had a child this special, is her reasoning, then wouldn’t you want to know about it? A leading cardiac surgeon, she reckons, or maybe even a conductor with the New York Philharmonic. Definitely someone highbrow, cultured and intelligent though, she assumes. Anyway, she sets about tracking him down and discovers he’s none of the above……he’s actually in prison with a police record the length of your arm.

Of course, Eloise panics and tries to circumvent fate by setting this guy on the path to middle class-dom, so that in years to come, should her daughter try to track him down, she’ll find a Dad she can be proud of and not an ex-con sleeping rough and on a Methadone program.

So, just like in My Fair Lady or Pygmalion, Eloise sets about making a gentleman of this rough diamond, like Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, except gender reversed……..

3. We chatted to you last year about a lot of book-related things, and a lot has changed in twelve months. One thing that has crept up again is how ‘vapid’ Chick Lit is and how it’s a ‘waste of time’ and ‘rots our brains’, what do you say to people like that? People who judge a genre without actually bothering to read it?

The wonderful Melissa Hill says the only label any author need worry about is ‘crap’ and I quite agree. People have being saying disparaging things about women’s commercial fiction for as long as I’ve been writing it, and the fact is, these books still sell in their thousands, so clearly there is a market out there for ‘Chicklit.’ You’re quite right though, sadly there is a cultural snobbery out there that will always run down whatever is populist, and not just in fiction either. You can see this happening across the board in the music industry and in broadcasting too. Critics who sneer at you for watching X Factor or going to see a rom-com movie, that kind of thing.

4. Has anything changed on the TV front? I mentioned in our last interview that a couple of your books had been optioned, has there been any movement on that?

Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to have had two books, IF THIS IS PARADISE I WANT MY MONEY BACK and I NEVER FANCIED HIM ANYWAY optioned. It’s a very long, slow process though, and I’m told it can take up to ten years to get a book that’s been optioned actually made into a film, so I won’t be rushing out to buy a dress to wear to a premiere any time soon!!! Nice vote of confidence though, when a producer thinks a story has a life beyond the printed page.

5. Before we go any further (I can’t believe I’ve waited so long!), I must ask you what ‘Anyroadup’ means. It’s mentioned quite a bit in Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? and I presume it’s another word for ‘Anyway’, am I correct?

Yes, that’s right. It’s actually a phrase my Mum uses all the time and is synonymous with ‘ anyway.’ But then Mum watches a lot of Coronation St and I think picked it up there. She also says ‘Chook,’ all the time too! Terrible telly addict, that woman.

6. You told us last year that Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? was the most romantic of your books, it was a pure romance, no hint of magic or anything similar, did you enjoy the experience and would you again write a novel that’s just about two people who love each other and have some obstacles to navigate?

Yes, I hugely enjoyed writing this book and found I really got swept up in the romance of it as I worked my way through it. I was very interested in writing about a young couple who get together when they’re both teenagers and are madly in love, the way you only really can be at aged fifteen. You know, at that age, you’d follow the man you love to the ends of the earth with only a packet of fun sized Mars bars to live off. Whereas at forty, you could barely be arsed driving him into town on a Friday night because he wants to go out on the piss with the lads…yet again.

Then I wondered, what happens if you flash forward to when this couple are suddenly aged thirty and growing apart from each other, when the cracks are starting to show in their once perfect marriage? What then?

7. Did you know when you started writing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? How it would end? I knew how I wanted it to end but I wasn’t ever dead-on it was going to end the way I liked it. Did you ever want to just throw caution to the wind and end it differently?

I would always do out a detailed synopsis of every book I sit down to write, like a kind of skeleton outline of the story. I find this really helps, and although I may meander off in slightly different plot twists and turns, once the ‘roadmap’ is in place, it’s always great to keep coming back to. So no, I’d be fairly clear at the outset as to exactly how a book will end. Having said that though, part of the joy of writing lies in characters coming in who take your story in a direction you could never have foreseen!

8. One thing about the book that annoyed me slightly was Annie’s tendency to let everyone in Stickens walk all over her. Was the purposeful on your part? Was that you showing that Annie was so far in a rut that she just couldn’t get together the will to tell everyone to get lost?

Yes, that’s dead right. I wanted to show how put upon Annie was in her adopted home town, and how used she felt and how deeply frustrated with everyone around her. She’s a people pleaser by nature, and everyone around her takes advantage of that easy-going side of her. So when the job of a lifetime comes along, there’s no question in her mind but that she must take the gig and leave. Otherwise, she’ll stay put and slowly smother, forever resenting everyone around her for letting her pass up on her one big chance. I really wanted the reader to realize at this point that she is leaving her husband and home for a number of very good reasons.

9. You’re an actress yourself, as we all know, and you made Annie an actress. However, Annie’s main line of actress work seems to be theatre work. How much knowledge did you have of theatre work prior to writing the novel? How different (or similar) is it to being an actress on the TV?

It’s a long time since I was on a stage, but the main difference between theatre and TV acting and is that theatre acting tends to be all consuming, particularly if you happen to be touring with a show. Your fellow cast members really do become almost like a second family, and I felt that was an important part of the story when the cast get to Broadway. Particularly for Annie, who’s so far from Dan her husband and desperately missing him, in the early chapters at least. Course, things change for her dramatically from there on in………but I won’t ruin it for you!

10. It was reported you’d signed a new book deal with Avon for two novels, what’s it like working with Avon a year or so on from when we last discussed your publishers? (Presumably it’s good!)

I really couldn’t be happier or luckier with my publishers! The girls at Avon really are an extraordinary team you’ve done wonders with both books we’ve published together so far. My editor is the amazing Claire Bord, who is absolutely terrific, a real joy to work with. Makes my job so, so much easier, I can tell you.

11. What do you think of the book covers Avon have designed so far for your two novels? I love them especially the newly changed cover for Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. They seem to have really captured what your novels are about.

I adore them and hope that readers do too…although so far the feedback is all great! I have to say though, I think my favorite cover by far is the paperback of WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW, I love the New York skyline twinkling away in the background….there’s just something mesmerizing about seeing that picture of the Manhattan lights, isn’t there?

12. Finally, can you tell us what is in the Irish waters? There are so many wonderful Irish authors around, do you all come out of a factory or something?!

Personally, I reckon it’s because we’re all such irrepressible talkers. I know myself, I live alone and work from home, so when given a chance to chat, rarely shut up and barely draw breath long enough to let anyone else get a word in. Seriously though, Irish gals are Olympian chatters…..you only have to look at our mobile phone bills to see the proof of that!

Thanks so much Claudia!

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