About the author: Virginia Feito

She grew up in Madrid and Paris, went to university in London and quit her job as a copywriter to work on her debut novel.

This novel was inspired by… An image, at first, that came to mind one day as I listened to The Nutcracker, Overture, of a woman clad in a fur coat and holding one of those tiny purses you can’t hang on your shoulder, so you have to hang it on your wrist and curl your hand like you’re waiting for it to be kissed.

The most challenging thing about writing it was…

That I had left my promising advertising job to write this book. Suddenly I was waking up in the morning with nowhere to go but my writing desk. Simultaneously fun and terrifying.

My writing habits are…

Not very defined yet as I’ve only written the one book, but basically I try to write or read, undistracted, for the longest possible period of time every day. I make music playlists for whatever story I’m writing and if I get stuck with a particular passage, or just to motivate better writing, I’ll turn to the music. But the writing habit I find most useful is obsessiveness. When writing Mrs March, everything I read, watched, thought, dreamt, was used as book fodder, like a literary, cerebral umbilical cord.