Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing journey?
Lovely to meet you Sharon and thank you again for the interview. I am Audla English- which is quite apt as I am English and live in the glorious North East of the country; a beautiful part which is steeped in history, greenery, sea, sand but perhaps not sun!I have always wanted to be a writer and used to make picture books of stories when I was a child, some of which I still have. It took me 15 years of being a ‘grown up’ until I reminisced about those happy days and I was brave enough to write again.
If you had to give an elevator pitch for The Last Village, what would it be?
I would simply say that ‘The Last Village’ is a love story to bind the generations. If you love or miss your Gran- you should read this book!
Seventy years earlier, Lillian Smith, had been part of the close-knit community that once thrived in the village that existed next to the lighthouse. A chance meeting with a sailor one day, would change the course of her life forever.
What inspired you to write a timeslip novel?
I was hugely inspired by my late Gran as well as the coastal setting of South Tyneside in the North East of England. The novel is a dual-time line historical fiction which details the life of Lily, a young woman growing up with her friends in 1945 whereas the other side of the story, in 2017, is about Anna and her own discovery of her grandmother’s past life- it is a novel which spans and binds the generations through family and friendship.
