Name of Author: Toby Litt

Title of Book: Lilian's Spell Book

Favorite Authors: John Keats, Emily Bronte, Henry James, Edgar Allen Poe, David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, Claire-Louise Bennett.

Bio: I grew up in a village in the middle of England. Lots of climbing trees. School wasn't so good. University was better. Went to Prague, to teach English, and find time to write. I always wanted to write. Came back and worked in a bookshop. Got an agent. Did a creative writing course. Got a publisher. The rest is ISBN numbers. Most recently, I did a comic called Dead Boy Detectives and a graphic novel co-authored with Neil Gaiman called Free Country: A Tale of the Children's Crusade.

Can you explain what your book is all about? 

Lilian's Spell Book is the story of an ordinary family moving into a magical house. The main character isn't Lilian – it's Jeane Jonson. She's a mum, with a young son and a very young daughter. And a husband. They inherit a gorgeous Elizabethan manor house deep in the English countryside, but it comes with certain conditions. Almost as soon as they move in, weird and scary things start to happen. But the story is far more about wonder than terror. I want it to be a book of wonders.

Who is your target audience - and why? 

With this story, unlike lots of others, I had a very clear idea who the audience would be. It was for a woman like Jeane Jonson. That is, a woman who could easily do amazing things, and show fantastic bravery, and be a total heroine, but who doesn't necessarily get the chance. Except in her head. Except through reading. I wanted to give that woman the ghost story she would most want to read.

What is 'paranormal' about your story? 

Oh, I don't want to give too much away. Can I just say it's a haunted house story?

Does it contain other genre elements, if so which ones - and why? 

Tricky question. It's pretty much a straight ghost story, but I suppose it's also a story about a marriage going through a bad patch.

Tell us about your writing process - how do you get from story idea to a Wattpad published story? 

With Lilian's Spell Book, I wrote it quite steadily, by hand, in big brown notebooks from the shop muji. I was drawn along by the story, and really felt that I was getting somewhere special. I remember writing the ending in a hotel room in Belgium, because I didn't want to break the flow, so I'd taken the manuscript away with me. When I finished, I burst into tears. That hasn't happened with anything else I've written.

Did you encounter any challenges when writing, if so - how did you overcome them? 

It was a challenge trying to make Jeane believable. She's funny, insightful but also quite straightforward. I usually write about odder folk. I hope I've succeeded in making her alive. I have had some really good and useful feedback on Wattpad. That's the main reason I put the novel up here – so it could be read, and so people could let me know whether or not I should change it. There's an Afterword, in which I explained that the novel didn't find a publisher, and asking for suggestions as to how it might be improved.

You often hear that 'writing well' is the baseline for success. What does that mean for you? 

For me, to write well is to write something so good, or moving, or odd that – looking back – I can't believe I was capable of writing it.

One final question, this being the Paranormal genre: Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

I've never actually seen a ghost, but I'm fairly convinced I've been seen by one – seen all the way through.