Freya Berry's writing career began as a journalist at Reuters. After a stint in New York reporting on the 2016 US election she left to write her acclaimed first novel, The Dictator's Wife. With her new novel, The Birdcage Library, Freya has ended up creating a love story and a detective mystery, two things she never planned to write. Freya tells about the challenges of writing two timelines, the importance of a finding a state of half-focus, and digging deeper to make your writing truthful.