Tasmina Perry is the  internationally bestselling author of  fourteen novels including Kiss Heaven Goodbye, Private Lives and Guilty Pleasures. Her books have been translated into twenty languages and sold over two million copies worldwide. She is a former lawyer  turned award-winning journalist and was editing the UK edition of In Style magazine when her debut novel Daddy's Girls went into the top ten and became one of the biggest selling debuts of the years. She also writes thrillers under the pseudonym JL Butler. Mine - her first novel in that pen name has been optioned by Sony Pictures. She lives in London with her husband, son and too many shoes.

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Tell us a little bit about how you came to be a novelist.

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I didn't start off an an author. Or a journalist. I actually trained as a lawyer and had a legal career all mapped out until I met Take That in a cafe in Manchester. I went up to Robbie and asked if I could interview them because my secret dream was to be a writer. Take That were just starting out so it must have been one of their first ever interviews. A couple of years later, when they were big stars, I used it to secure a junior writer's job at More magazine.

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Was it easy to make the switch to magazine journalism?

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Life as a lawyer was not for me - I realised that pretty quickly. So I felt liberated when I became a journalist. I lived and breathed working in magazines and that passion helped me move up the ladder pretty quickly.  I was an editor within two years so my parents weren't cross anymore that I had abandoned my respectable legal career!

 

 

Do you miss working in a busy office? A writer's life can be quite solitary.

 

Looking back, I worked through one of the golden ages of magazines and I will always be grateful for that opportunity.  I interviewed celebrities on private jets, got invited to premieres and fashion shows - I even raced to the South of France in a fleet of Capris.

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Having all these adventures and being able to share them with the readers was a dream come true and I sat down and wrote a novel (Daddy's Girls) for the very same reason. Books, like magazines, are an armchair trip with the power to whisk you away to wherever your words and imagination will take you. So I do see the two professions as being very similar. That said - I do miss the banter of an office, although my husband works from home too. Often we'll just down tools and go for brunch or for a walk to talk through our plot-points although really we're just glad of the company!