Tell us about your book. What’s it called? 
Beauty and the Kids.

Will is a normal teenager: he lives with his parents, goes to school, spends time with his friends and daydreams about one day asking out the girl he has a crush on. His world, however, is about to be turned upside down when a beautiful and mysterious stranger appears and strange things start to happen. Can Will and his friends discover the new lodger’s secret and what can they do to stop her plans?

What kind of strange things? Or would that be giving away too much of the story?
Hmm, difficult to say without giving too much away. Let’s just say that people start acting strangely and Will and his friends had better come up with a plan before it’s too late.

What genre is it?
Fantasy.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
It’s about teenagers, so anyone who enjoys reading teenage fantasy fiction.

What drew you to this genre? Why teenage fantasy fiction and not, say, horror or romance or, I don’t know, ancient Egyptian erotica?
I find the state of being a teenager really interesting and wanted to explore it from the safety of being an adult and not a teenager any more! I think that what happens to you in your teenage years remain the most powerful influences on who you become as a person – you feel more deeply about everything at this time than you do before or afterwards – the people you are with, the books you love, the music you listen to, the incidents that make you feel humiliated or sexy or proud. Why do you think Lord of the Rings is always top of the favourite book lists? It’s because we read them as teenagers and never felt that strongly about a book again, even though we’ve read much better things before and since.

I think that being a teenager is really hard, and one of the main themes of my book is the issue of beauty – what beauty is, what it means, the power that it wields – and how it is so very important at a time when you feel at your least beautiful. I’ve also always been drawn to things that are a little bit magical – fairy stories, sci fi, stories that take things just outside our normal world, and this seems to sit well with my theory about being a teenager – everything is heightened, so why not reality as well?

How long did it take to write?
It took me the best part of a year to write the first couple of drafts, writing three to four mornings a week before work (I was managing an arthouse cinema at the time), reviewing, redrafting and rewriting. Then it sat in a drawer for more than a year before an offer from Legend Press came along to have the book published as print-on-demand. A madcap three days followed as I whipped it into shape.

What was the most challenging part of your creative process?
The most challenging part of the process was the reviewing and redrafting part of the process. The first draft was blissfully, gloriously easy because the story had walked around in my head for so long before I put pen to paper that it was ready to go when I finally got started. However, it never quite goes to plan and at the end you have to think to yourself – have I explained this properly? Will the reader follow me here? Have I left anything in from a previous draft that shouldn’t be there but that I just can’t see any more? That’s the tough bit. It’s also the least fun because you know what happens at the end of the story by then. Part of the joy of the early drafting is not knowing what your characters are going to do until they do it. You’re just a conduit for them – I love that element of surprise.

Not knowing what your characters are going to do? We’ve had other interviewees say the same thing, too. As non-writers, we are not quite sure what you mean; surely, your characters are slaves to your plot and therefore, as their creator, you know exactly what they’re going to do. No?
Writers work in different ways. Some are completely in control of their plots and characters at all times – J.K. Rowling is a good example – she spent many hours plotting her books exactly. I don’t work like that however. I always start with an idea that won’t go away, it loiters in my head for months and months until I write it down to get it out of my head. This idea is often a sense of atmosphere, a character or two and a particular situation, usually with a ‘what if?’ question. What if this character ended up in that situation? What would happen if this person found that thing? I write to find out the answer to that question. I often have a strong sense of that character’s personality, but even so I don’t know them very well at the beginning. As I write I get to know them better, and I get a better understanding of how they might react in the situations that occur, but, like anyone you know in real life, even really well  – a sibling, a partner – you can guess what they might do in a given situation but you don’t actually know what they’re going to say until it’s happening. The journey is often a surprise to me, even if I have an idea of how it’s going to end, and I often restructure at some point in the drafting process to make sure that the story carries through and doesn’t wander off the point too much, but the first draft is always somewhat unexpected. I couldn’t write if I knew what was going to happen at all times – I’d get bored halfway through!

Can you tell us a little about  yourself?
I am about to give up my job as a full time Director of an arts venue in order to go freelance and give myself more time to write. I have worked in the arts for more than ten years, working in a concert hall, a cinema, a centre for literature and countless festivals and events before directing my own venue. My first love is literature, however, with my mother saying that I was bored until I learnt to read. I have a degree in American Literature, was the Vice Chair of the Camden Poets for several years, and currently live in deepest, darkest Shropshire.

Have you got a blog where readers can keep up with your work?
Not yet, but you can follow me on Twitter: @rachelonthehill.

And where can we buy Beauty and the Kids?

From Amazon.

What’s next?

A non-fiction memoir about an inventor, a novel about a mobile library, and some short animated films using my poetry. Lots afoot!