And the winner is…

The Big Book fiction winner is announced

Here, we catch up with Kathryn, 55, to find out what it’s like to have her latest book voted number one:

How does it feel to have won? It’s fantastic! This may be the first thing I’ve won, apart from a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream on a tombola in 1979, which I was too young to drink at the time.

Her Last Promise is a real page-turner centred around a mysterious letter arriving from Spain. How did you come up with the idea?

Two years ago, I was on holiday in Spain with my husband, Rob, and our kids, Cameron, now 25, and Ellen, now 21. We were biking through the historic city of Segovia in sweltering heat, when we got to a bend where there was a gorge. On the peninsula was an ancient hermitage called Ermita de San Frutos. I wondered about the people living there. What would make someone give up everything, leave their family behind and devote their life to God in a place like this? I was fascinated by the idea and knew it would make a book. You self-published your first novel,

The Letter. How did you go on to secure a publishing deal from there? For more than 20 years, my husband and

I ran our own business. I did the accounts, but I’d always enjoyed writing, so when we sold it, I thought I’d give writing a book a proper go. After being rejected by about 12 agents, I decided to self-publish.

However, the Kindle store market is so saturated that it’s virtually impossible to make your book visible. After selling just 120 copies in eight months, I decided to make my book free for five days and see what happened. Amazingly, in that time, 10,000 people downloaded it! As interest grew, it climbed the Kindle chart until it reached number one! That’s when the publishers, Headline Review, approached me and offered me a two-book deal – a dream come true!

How long does it take you to write a book? For the first draft, I generally have 12 months. However, it never seems like long enough! My favourite part is when I type ‘the end’, closely followed by my least favourite part – sending it to my editor, because they let me know what they think of it!

Do you have a writing routine?

For me, it all gets done between the hours of 10am and 5pm, and I always take weekends off. Writing a book is like filling a swimming pool with a syringe – a pool that someone constantly pulls the plug out of! Very often, I’ll go back to what I’ve done the previous day and completely change it. It’s all part of the process.

• Her Last Promise by Kathryn Hughes (Headline Review, £7.99) is out 22 August.