L.B. Hathaway’s Posie Parker mysteries are Amazon bestsellers and that’s not surprising because they combine the charm of the classic Golden Age country house mystery – the Agatha Christie set – with the glamour and excitement of 1920s London.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today L.B., or Lily as she’s called, talks about her latest book, Murder on the White Cliffs – yes, that is the White Cliffs of Dover.  She tells why Noel Coward’s favourite bay and beach house feature in the story and she lets us in on the secret of how she fits her writing career around being a mum to two small girls.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How Lily pivoted from law to novelistThe attraction of 1920s LondonTime organization with a young familyLearning from other writersMixing fact with fictionThe books she goes to again and again

Where to find L.B. Hathaway: 

Website: http://www.lbhathaway.com/

Facebook: @LBHathawaybooks

 Twitter: @LbHathaway

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here’s Lily.

Jenny Wheeler: Hi there Lily, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us. 

L.B. Hathaway: Thank you so much, Jenny, for having me on. It's such an honor to be on your show today.

Introducing L.B. (Lily) Hathaway

Jenny Wheeler: At the beginning, we'll clarify your author name. You write under the name of L.B. Hathaway, but you are Lily, so anybody who is looking for your books, it's under the name L.B. rather than Lily, isn't it?

L.B. Hathaway: Yes, it is. It's L.B. Hathaway.

Jenny Wheeler: How did you get started in this wonderful creation exercise that you've now embarked on. You've got the eighth book out soon. Was there a once upon a time moment when you thought, I've got to write fiction, and if so, was there a catalyst for it?

Mystery author LB Hathaway

L.B. Hathaway: That's a great question. I think storytelling has always been important to me, since I was a child. I always did write fiction, little bits here and there, poetry and short stories. I never thought I could be a fiction writer as my career to earn money, and so I studied hard and I became a lawyer, and I spent my twenties doing that. The once upon a time moment didn't happen. It was more of a catalyst in my own life.

It was an odd time. I had met my husband and we moved to Switzerland. I had resigned from my job as a lawyer in the UK, in London, and I was starting to look for other jobs in Switzerland. I had this time, this period of time, this kind of bubble ahead of me.

It was a real gift, actually. It was the first time I had not been working or studying pretty much my whole life, and I decided it was the time to write a book. I wrote two books one after the other and they became the first two Posie Parker novels, so it came out of a career break in a way.

Career change made an opportunity

What happened was that the Posie Parker series really took off and I never did have to look for that job as a lawyer again. I also had my first child about a year later so then I became a full-time mum as well and started to balance and juggle the two together. 

Jenny Wheeler: That's a great story. It's funny how quite often a hiatus in life’s flow like that can give people the opportunity to look at themselves and think, this is something I really want to do, so that's fantastic. As I've mentioned the eighth one is just out.  Posie Parker is a mystery series set in the 1920s and it's almost a classical Golden Age type of mystery, set in country houses and that kind of thing. What attracted you first of all to the mystery genre as your chosen genre?

Success with first Posie Parker mystery

L.B. Hathaway: I think that to be a good writer, or to enjoy writing, you need to love your subject. It’s almost to live and to know your subject,