Interview with Sandra Ireland #LoveBooksTour #BoneDeep

I'm delighted to welcome Sandra Ireland, author of  Beneath the Skin and Bone Deep to the blog today. I first interviewed Sandra last year (you can read my interview with her here) and am grateful to her for taking the time to answer more questions from me. I reviewed Bone Deep , her second novel here.

Your new book, Bone Deep has just been released. Tell me a little about it?
Bone Deep poses the question, what happens when you fall in love with the wrong person? The consequences threaten to be far-reaching and potentially deadly. Bone Deep is a contemporary novel of sibling rivalry, love, betrayal and murder. This is the story of two women: Mac, who is bent on keeping the secrets of the past from her only son, and the enigmatic Lucie, whose past is something of a closed book. Their story is underpinned by the creaking presence of an abandoned water mill, and haunted by the local legend of two long-dead sisters, themselves rivals in love, and ready to point an accusing finger from the pages of history.

What inspired you to write it?
I worked at Barry Mill, Angus, for several years. It’s a National Trust for Scotland property, one of the last working watermills in Scotland. I grew to love the whole process of milling, and the landscape around the mill. I always had some quirky folktales up my sleeve to entertain visitors. I found myself drawn to the mill as a setting for a novel, and the ancient Border Ballad of The Cruel Sister seemed to fit. In the ballad, the jealous older sister shoves the younger one into the mill pond. As I’m not a historical novelist, I wanted to make this a very modern story. It looks at contemporary relationships, but the past is never far away. I was very fortunate to receive support from Creative Scotland who saw the potential of the project.
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