Featured Interview With Toni Allen
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m an English author, born in London and brought up under the sound of Jumbo jets near Heathrow. I now live on the Surrey/Hampshire border on the edge of Jane Austen country where I spend any free time indulging in my passion for photography. I enjoy photographing wildlife and the local landscape, and share my images on social media so that readers can get a feel for the locations around Farnham that I use in my novels.
I’ve had numerous non-fiction articles published, and won awards for short fiction and poetry, including a first prize awarded in a competition judged by noted mystery writer P D James. She was a total inspiration and personally encouraged me never to give up with my dream of becoming a published writer.
To date I’ve written many, many books, some published and some tucked away in secret files never to be seen again. My published work includes the Jake Talbot Investigates mystery series, which began with Visiting Lilly (2014) and continues with Saving Anna (2015). I’m currently working on the third book, Finding Louisa, due out in 2016. I’m also the author of two non-fiction books on how to read tarot, The System of Symbols: a New Way to Look at Tarot, which is now also published in Italian by Spazio Interiore; and Sex & Tarot.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
From a very early age I liked to make stories up in my head, but it wasn’t until I learnt to write that I began to set them down on paper. At school I was always the pupil gaining top marks for my short stories, and I found much more pleasure from writing than reading. To me reading was a very static pastime, and I’d much rather be walking along the river bank at the end of our garden making up stories: and probably looked quite mad as I usually said them out loud!
I was fortunate to attend a school in which the teacher read us the classics. At the end of each day she’d read us one chapter before we went home, so my head was quickly filled with fabulous characters such as Long John Silver and Mr Scrooge. We were encouraged to read the book for ourselves, and although I did read many, I developed a fascination for science fiction, Marvel comics and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
I completed my first novel when I was about eighteen, a sweet story set in an imaginary land, in which an old man wandering through the countryside finds a young hare who sets him on a journey to discover the meaning of life. That particular manuscript is still safely tucked away in a drawer.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I’m a great fan of Dick Francis and Winston Graham (Don’t forget that he wrote terrific mysteries as well as the Poldark series), but Dick Francis has probably influenced me more than any other writer. He has a knack of hooking you into the story and taking you through to a nail biting end. To keep a reader turning the pages quickly, desperate to see if their hero survives, even when we know that they’re bound to survive, because they’re the hero, is a special art and hard to emulate.
Although I love mysteries and thrillers, I also enjoy romantic mysteries and a sprinkling of dystopian fantasy. If the book grabs me, I’ll read it.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Saving Anna is Book 2 in my Jake Talbot Investigates mystery series.
(Visiting Lilly is Book 1)
In Visiting Lilly we met Detective Inspector Jake Talbot, an English cop with sadness in his past. After both of his parents die within a few days of each at Christmas, his sister Anna goes into a catatonic state, becoming emotionally lost to him. Although Jake pays for the best treatment possible and a beautiful residential care home for his sister, he finds Anna’s nothingness impossible to deal with: a fact that he keeps to himself.
Jake hates working undercover, yet, when ordered to Dorset to observe a sinister cult for the Ministry of Defence, he accepts, because the group’s beliefs pose a direct threat to Anna. The MOD also need his friend Frankie’s exceptional computer skills, skills he’s prohibited from using except on the Ministry’s behalf. Bitter from previous dealings with them, Frankie refuses to work for the government, but is willing to assist Talbot.
Neither man knows what they’re meant to be looking for, but observation turns into investigation when they discover a woman’s body draped over the gravestone of one of Talbot’s ancestors. Soon after, a dangerous piece of evidence slips into Talbot’s hands, the plotters’ desperation to get it back becoming the catalyst for murder.
As they uncover a conspiracy that links psychic manipulation, drugs, and death, the two friends grow from master and apprentice to partners in detection, protecting each other from increasing hazards. The trail leads them into deeper shadows, where Talbot’s old enemy waits to wreak a revenge that is as shocking as it is painful.
It will take all of Talbot’s detective skills, and Frankie’s brilliance and imagination, working together, if they are to bring down the criminal conspiracy and defeat his enemy.
Set on the beautiful Dorset coast, this gritty psychological thriller races to a chilling conclusion in which Frankie and Talbot must face the cost of saving Anna.
Saving Anna is 380 pages and about 137,00, but even though it’s a long book, reeaders are loving it’s pace and giving it 5 star reviews.
It took me about a year to write, and then my editor and I spent five months going through every sentence and every aspect of plot structure with a fine tooth-comb. I’m incredibly proud of all the hard work she put in on my behalf, and how she helped me make what was a good book into an amazing book.
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