1) My two favourite ways to relax (reading aside) are playing the ukulele and the piano, especially the music of Ludovico Einaudi.
Rebecca Stoneholl
2) Since the age of 18, I have never lived in the same place for more than three years, ranging from Durham to Brighton to Bangalore to Nairobi.
3) At the age of 21, I travelled on my own in India for one year. Wow, what an incredible, eye-opening, enriching year that was.
4) I hate supermarkets and shopping malls with a passion. I go when they can't be avoided but nearly always have a meltdown at some point!
5) I wrote my first draft of The Poet's Wife whilst in a wheelchair following a very bad skiing accident in which I smashed my calcaneam (heel bone) to smithereens.
6) I spent a lot of time as a child in the Swiss mountains as my father lived there. The mountains remain my number 1 destination for peace and rejuvenation.
7) I met my husband on a bus in Guatemala! Unbelievable really that I went all the way there and ended up falling in love with a boy on a bus who was from half an hour down the road from me back in England!
8) I am really close to my brother (a film maker) and my sister (a violinist), both hugely talented in their fields. From a very young age, we said we would one day create the Stonehill Family Productions with me writing the scripts, my brother directing and producing and my sister doing the music. The dream remains very much alive!
9) Since the birth of my first child in 2006, I have struggled with prolonged bouts of chronic insomnia. For anyone who has ever had sustained sleep deprivation, they will know this is no joke.
10) From as young as I can remember, I've had the travel bug. I grew up pouring over my mother's photo albums from the sixties and seventies, marvelling at her amazing travels all around the world. This will come into my third novel...watch this space!
