Jojo Moyes

It wasn't Me Before You.

Oh, no, it wasn't.

It was a book called Sheltering Rain.

Yeah, Sheltering Rain, of course.

And it was talking to my grandmother, who was Australian, and she had married my grandfather after two weeks of knowing him.

And she'd actually been attached to another man at the time, but just met my grandfather, fell in love.

They were happily together until he died.

but she told me this story and I'd never really got into how they'd met because I was like, hang on, he was Scottish, you were Australian, how did you meet?

And she told me this story and I said, how did you know after two weeks?

And she said, oh, well, you know, dear, you just know, don't you?

And I thought, well, no, I can't even pick a brand of air conditioner and stick with it.

And it got me thinking about how different generations of people

women have viewed choice and how sometimes how having loads of choice might actually be not the best thing for you.

Because she just made this commitment and she stuck with it.

And I suddenly thought, oh, I want to write about different generations of women.

And unbeknownst to me is where chance and luck came in.

Maeve Binchy, Rosamund Pilcher, all those great doyennes of female literature had suddenly announced either they were retiring or they'd written their last book.

And so publishers were casting around looking for a multi-generational story.

So I wrote three chapters of this story in a synopsis and I sent it to this agent and she just sent it back going, I want more.

And I went out heavily pregnant and met six different publishers and they all bid on this book.