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“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” Ibn Battuta
Mallorca is a beautiful Spanish island in the Balearics, rich with history and culture, from the medieval architecture of Palma’s old town to the picturesque coastal village of Deia and the mountainous interior. Many come to the relaxed island for an escape, but others imagine murder in paradise.
In this interview, international crime author, JJ Marsh, talks about the inspiration of Mallorca and how she sees the world as an outsider, constructing stories from her travels.
JJ Marsh is the bestselling author of the Beatrice Stubbs crime series. Her latest book is The Woman in the Frame, set in Mallorca, which we’re talking about today.
Show notes
- Why Mallorca is so enticing to visit and write about
- The joy of older cities with lots of history
- Seeing past the beauty of a place to write murder
- Wine and food recommendations
- Is there any truth to cultural stereotypes? Writing as an outsider.
- Recommended books about or set on Mallorca
You can find JJ Marsh at JJMarshAuthor.com
Transcript of the interview
Jo: JJ Marsh is the bestselling author of the Beatrice Stubbs crime series. Her latest book is The Woman in the Frame, set in Mallorca, which we’re talking about today. Welcome to the show, Jill.
Jill: Thanks for having me, Jo.
Jo: It’s great to talk to you and I should say we’re recording this still not in lockdown, but we can’t travel much. I wish we could be on the island of Mallorca having a glass of wine to do this!
Jill: I’ve got the exact wine in mind as well.
Jo: Oh, have you? We’re going to come back to that.
Why Mallorca? Tell us where it is and why you were so attracted to it that you wanted to set a book there?
Jill: Mallorca is a Spanish Island. It’s the largest of the Balearics. But unfortunately, it’s more associated with drunken tourism than culture. But if you travel away from Palma in the south towards the north, you discover a landscape and a history. It’s just such a wonderful place you would want to keep it a secret.
As for my attraction to it, that’s personal. As the child of an engineer, I grew up in Nigeria and Dubai and Hong Kong. So while my teenage self was pretty well-traveled, I wasn’t so familiar with Europe. Then I found out that my estranged paternal grandfather lived in Mallorca. And one of my uncles engineered a family reconciliation.
When we first met him in the north of Mallorca, I was just completely enthralled both by him and his Hemingway-esque persona and the island itself as a story location. I think Mallorca has been waiting in the back of my mind for over 30 years.
Jo: Wow. That is so interesting you growing up around the world like that. It’s just fascinating. I want to come back on the drunken tourism reputation. You’re right. I mean, Magaluf is famous for British people, young parties. But I stayed in Palma and I actually set some of one of my books there, Valley of Dry Bones, because of the monastery and the Franciscans there.
Jill: Oh, yes.
Jo: Palma has this wonderful old city of almost Templar style medieval architecture. But you’re right. If you go outside of that in that area… Do you like that old city area as well?
Jill: Yes, I do. I’m a big fan of these old historical cities. We were recently in Naples and also in Bordeaux. And those kinds of places with their history, especially places like Naples, which has been taken over by so many different cultures and influenced by so many external forces. Yes, I love it. And I think Palma is the same, obviously, because of where it is.
Jo: Absolutely.
What are some of the places on the island that you particularly enjoy or that you featured in the book?
Jill: The book is centered around the town of Deià in the north and but also Port de Sóller and Sóller. They’re both absolutely blissful, gorgeously picturesque with outdoor markets and higgledy-piggledy little houses up and down the mountain.
Also, Deià in particular is shadowed by the mountains, the Tramuntana. It’s like a little amphitheater basically. There are also all these little coves and rocky points where you can just stand and gaze at the ocean.
As for unusual things that made it into the book, I think probably it’s less to do with locations and more to do with the details. I was 17 when I first went there. And it’s little details like that that found their way in. And I had to check, of course, that they’re still happening.
Things like a chocolate milk drink called laccao and black pearl earrings my father bought for me in the market. And the sardines, the smell of grilled sardines, and the sound of the cicadas, all of that stuff really brings Mallorca to life for me.
Oh, there was also another thing called…which my grandfather…I was 17 and not allowed to drink, but that didn’t bother him. It’s a drink that’s sort of got an aniseed flavor called hierbas and I got a real taste for that at the age of 17 years old.
This is the great thing about being an author. Of course, you find a beautiful location, and you can take it from wherever you want and put it wherever you want. So there’s a cafe that appears in the book which is actually stolen from Porto.
Cafe Majestic is an art nouveau bar and restaurant, which I’ve actually just relocated to Sóller, and the original Cafe Majestic which is on Rua de Santa Catarina in Porto is legendary for having the most beautiful architecture and the rudest waiters in the world.
Jo: That’s funny.
In the book, you do talk about a poet, I think, another author who’s associated with the island.
Jill: Robert Graves. Yes, one of the wartime poets. And it was interesting while I was researching all about Robert Graves who I’ve always been interested in anyway. And I was also researching the other poets like Siegfried Sassoon and people like that. I found out that Siegfried Sassoon had a lover whose name was Thomas Prewett, which is actually my real name.
I write as JJ Marsh but my real name is Jill Prewett. So yes, there were all sorts of connections. When you start digging, you find out all these wonderful things. You would know, wouldn’t you, as an archaeologist type of author?
Jo: As that kind of brain, yes. Where were the places particularly associated with Graves?
Jill: Deia. That’s where he lived. His house is still there and it’s a museum that you can visit. His great-nephew, a guy called Simon Gough, wrote a book called The White Goddess: An Encounter, based on his experiences visiting his great uncle. And it brings the place completely to life. I really would highly recommend that.
Jo: And you mentioned there the ocean and also the mountains. I feel, in my head, the life of Mallorca is mainly around the coastline.
Have you visited the interior? What is the rest of it like?
Jill: I think it’s really interesting, the interior. It’s like a lot of islands. It depends on what the action is, where you make your money. And so obviously, if it were agriculture or mining. There are huge pearl factories, surprisingly, on the island of Mallorca. So yes, definitely going inland is wonderful. But of course, it depends.
George Sand spent some time in the north of Mallorca when she was living with Frédéric Chopin. They went to spend the winter there thinking that the kind of heat and the sunshine would be good for his TB. But the north of the island is quite misty and foggy and not very healthy for somebody with tuberculosis in those days. So I guess it depends where you go. But yes, I would recommend going interior.
Jo: And they have those fincas, don’t they, these large houses with a courtyard almost like the Romans because it gets so hot in the daytime? You have a sort of sheltered courtyard.
Jill: Yes. I misheard you when I thought you said thinkers and I was thinking, “Philosophers?” And I’m with you now. I’m with you. Yes, fincas, definitely. It’s the same sort of thing.
They do this a lot in Spain and Portugal as well where you have these kind of old…they call them posadas in Spain and Portugal, those old converted places, as you say, with large courtyards and then now transformed into hotels, really nice hotels as well.
Jo: Yes, with shade on a hot summer day. Yes, wonderful. Also when I was in Palma…and I see the history behind things and like you talked about Robert Graves, the war poet, and death underlies these things.
But I feel like many people just see Mallorca as a holiday Island. I think it’s actually used for that, ‘Love Island,’ isn’t it, the TV show ‘Love Island?’ But I wonder about you.
How do you see through beauty and tourism to the darker side of places?
You write murder in paradise basically in this book.
Jill: Murder in paradise. That’s a great phrase. I think that having lived abroad for the majority of my life, I mean, away from Britain, I would say that one person’s paradise can be another’s prison.
I spent a lot of time in the company of people who would describe themselves as ex-pats. And I noticed there’s a huge level of unhappiness, even to the extent of alcoholism, and the yearning to be away from those beautiful places, those glorious beaches, those jaw-dropping landscapes, whatever it might be.
So there’s a kind of self-deception where people want their friends and their family to envy them for the heat and the exoticism of, I don’t know, their Moroccan Villa with an infinity pool, while secretly, they ache to be home with a view of Bolton gasworks.
It’s this dichotomy that interests me where people start to live double lives.
There’s the outward-facing social media fiction and then there’s the reality of what they’re up to. My books are about people, their motivations, their secrets, and the problems that result from those two things because that’s where I think it gets interesting.
Jo: That’s so interesting you say that actually — I lived in Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, for a few years. It’s got the white sand beaches, blah, blah, blah. But in order to write — that’s where I started writing books— I would put headphones on and listen to the sounds of thunder and pouring rain.
I feel like there’s something British about “it’s sunny, I must go outside.” And of course, you can’t do that in Queensland. It’s just too hot and you never get anything done. And so it’s exactly what you say. It’s like this is meant to be a paradise, but it’s not my paradise.
Jill: That’s true. And I think that we have that concept of work has to be dull and dreary and so on. And yet when it’s a beautiful place, we feel almost guilty for not being out and enjoying it. So yes, I completely get that. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Jo: You have traveled so much, what is home to you when you’ve been to so many places?
Jill: Well, home right now is here [in Zurich, Switzerland]. In fact, actually, this is going to sound implausible, but a bit like you, I’ve always been fascinated by maps. And as you just said, my childhood was pretty nomadic.
But I do recall when we were home in Wales one time, I went into the kitchen with one of my favorite books, which was ‘The Times Atlas of the World.’ And I said, ‘Mum, I’ve decided where I want to live when I grow up.’ And I poked my little finger up the map of Europe and I said, ‘Either there or there.’
She looked at the two cities and she said, ‘Well, that’s very nice, darling, but you’re learning French at school. In Turin, they speak Italian and in Zurich, they speak German. Are you sure?’
I said, ‘Yes, I want to be in the middle of things.’ And she’s reminded me of that conversation every time she visited Zurich after I moved here in 2004.
So home very much is here now. I married a Swiss guy. We’ve got a house and a life here. And I’m also very grateful for my Welsh heritage as well that’s given me a kind of cultural insight, I think, which is rather special on the Celtic bow.
Home to me is Europe.
I’ve got Swiss citizenship now. I applied for that immediately after the Brexit referendum. But being that little bit Welsh, it really never leaves you. I’ve even taught my Swiss husband to say, ach-y-fi, which he does rather well.
Jo: And what does that mean for people?
Jill: Ach-y-fi means…it’s, ‘Don’t be so disgusting.’ If a child picks something off the floor, you say, ‘Oh, no, don’t eat that, ach-y-fi.’ It’s a very strong one and it’s also got that kind of guttural sound and it really sounds like, ‘Put it down. That’s disgusting.’
Jo: That seems like an odd thing to teach him!
Jill: Well, it’s useful when you’ve got three dogs.
Jo: Fair enough. Well, coming back to Mallorca, your main character, Beatrice Stubbs, enjoys good food and wine.
Jill: Oh, yes.
Jo: And you mentioned there about what wine we might be drinking right now.
What are some of your recommendations for food and wine when visiting Mallorca?
Jill: Oh, well, the wine I had in mind that one of these days we will enjoy a glass is a red called Can Catorra, which my husband bought that for me while I was writing a book.
My motivation, which I had sitting here on my desk all the way through trying to write The Woman in the Frame, was a bottle of Can Catorra that when I actually finished it, I was allowed to drink.
But the funny thing is about Mallorca, you’d think it would all be fish and wine, obviously being a Mediterranean Island. But Mallorca has got this really interesting tradition of craft breweries. They make IPA, wheat beer, and Amber ale and all of it is organic and artisanal. It’s a million miles away from Carling, Black Label, and Magaluf.
As for food, though, well, I’m a non-meat eater. I love the seafood, the tapas, and the quintessential Tumbec, which is a vegetable dish with eggs. It’s a bit like Ratatouille or shakshuka. But if you really wanted to explore Mallorca in a culinary sense, it’s really got to be the fine wine and the fresh fish.
Jo: I feel like there are options at all levels of budgets as well. There is this upper-class part of the old town in Palma where you can go to some really incredible restaurants, but then you can also get the more street food or like tapas on the beach type of thing.
Jill: Absolutely. And the other funny thing about Deia now is it used to be an artists’ enclave, which is the Robert Graves era. But now it’s become a huge celebrity playground in terms of posh hotels.
Richard Branson’s got a big hotel there. Lots of celebrities go there to unwind and relax. You’ve got all levels. You can literally have something on the street and you can go to a five-star restaurant with really excellent cuisine, all in the same time.
Jo: We went on a yoga retreat to Mallorca. It’s got that level of yoga and spiritual and retreat as well as the eating and drinking and partying.
Jill: It really has. And I think that’s why Deia has become so well-known for this kind of thing. It’s just a really strange thing. As soon as you get there, there’s a sense of well being. And obviously, it could be to do with the sun and the beautiful sparkling Mediterranean Sea and all the rest of it.
But there’s something about the sandstone and the benevolent mountains above and the sea below. It really has got something special and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but everyone says the same thing. It just makes you feel good.
Jo: I must say I really want to go back once we’re out of the way we are in the world right now. But it’s also interesting. My husband and I love Spain. Given a choice, we would do Spain. In fact, I almost moved to Spain back in the ’90s, but…
Jill: Where were you going to go?
Jo: I don’t remember. I think I fell in love with Granada, down there in Andalusia. But what I think found is that I’m a morning person and the Spanish are not…it’s not really a morning culture. It’s very much you go out late. Everything is much, much later. I’d be going to bed by 9:30 p.m., and that’s when people actually just start going out in the evening.
Jill: True. Yes.
Jo: Given that you live in Switzerland, the stereotype of the Swiss is that things are very organized, pretty regulated and Spain to me is completely the opposite.
Do you find truth in those cultural stereotypes?
Jill: Yes, I do. I do find those stereotypes to be true. I moved to Switzerland from London. But previous to that, the place I’d spent most of my time was in Portugal. And that was glorious chaos and rules were just to be laughed at, basically.
Whereas Switzerland, it took me a while to adjust to the fact that if you’re living in an apartment building, you don’t have a shower after 10:00 at night, because that disturbs other people. And you have set washing days because the washing machines are all in the basement.
There were a lot of regulations and at first, I kicked against the traces. But gradually, I began to realize that that’s why the country works so well. And that’s why it’s so clean and that’s why it’s so respectful and polite and efficient.
So yes, it did take some adjustments especially if you’ve moved from one place to another. And I think my previous experiences were much more Southern. Switzerland’s a strange combination of Germanic and Italian and French culture. But over time, I’ve really grown to understand how it ticks.
Jo: Absolutely. Your books are all set in different places.
What’s your research process when it comes to travel?
Do you decide, ‘Well, I want to write a book there,’ and go there, or do they emerge from places that you travel to anyway?
Jill: A bit of both, I think. That’s quite a tough question. You write in an incredible range of locations, but I’ve limited myself to one continent. And I always want to highlight something about Europe. Now, that could be something cultural or it could be something physical or whatever. So it depends.
Sometimes the plot dictates the setting. My first book was about a serial killer of unscrupulous businessmen and that needed to be set in a financial center. I happen to live in Zurich so that was a no-brainer.
But other times, I wanted to set the story in Rioja country. A good friend of mine lives in Vitoria-Gasteiz. So I’ve started looking into what possible crimes could be written about wine and found out that there were a huge amount. And firstly, that was the place and then the plot.
[For ways to die in a vineyard, as well as a wonderful insight into the life of a vintner, check out The Taste of Place: French Vineyard Life with Caro Feely.]
Before this whole shut-down business, I had an absolute blast traveling to European cities like Naples and Bordeaux for research trips with a gang of mates. Our next one was about to be Bruges which is where I want to set my next book in Brussels, whether it’s Bruge or not, I’m not sure.
But now things have changed and I’m just less keen to take flights. My focus for the next book is where I can travel to by train. You can do so much online but going there and noticing the little tiny details, make a big big difference. So I’m currently trying to bully my husband into taking the sleeper train to Salzburg for the next book but he’s not given in yet.
Jo: I did read the other day that because of the different (pandemic) times we’re in and the fact that people are allowed to fly but a lot of people don’t even want to fly, that a lot of the night trains are coming back.
They’re opening more train lines across Europe. I feel like the heyday of trains perhaps disappeared with the EasyJet, the easy flight type mentality.
Perhaps now train travel is going to also have a bit of a renaissance?
Jill: I really hope so. I think we probably read the same article because I was thrilled to read about that as well. But they did put a caveat towards the end of the article about how less profitable night trains are. It’s night trains I’m particularly interested in so that you get on, go to sleep in your own little compartment. You don’t have to kind of go through all of the security detail and all the rest of it that you might do in an airport.
And then you wake up in another city, which for me, that sounds absolute bliss. But in terms of the number of people that can fit on these sleeper trains and the number of stops that they make because usually, you get people getting on and off so you’ve got far more people, but it’s not as profitable. But I’m really hoping that you’re right. I’m crossing my fingers that the golden age of train travel will come back.
Jo: I wanted to come back on that vineyard as well. I actually interviewed Caro Feely on the podcast who has a vineyard and we talked to them about all the things that can kill you in a vineyard. And it’s surprising, like there are many ways to die.
Jill: Really, in a vineyard?
Jo: Yes. It’s just like, seriously?!
But I wondered, when you travel, so say you go to Salzburg. Do you plan your research trips? Do you know you’re going to go to specific places? And then how do you document it? I always find that interesting with people.
Do you write a journal? Do you take pictures?
Jill: I do. I take a lot of notes. I take a lot of pictures and I keep everything, all the little maps, even the kind of ticket stubs and everything like that, I’ve got hundreds of these little books sitting here on my desk with things stuffed in them from all over the place.
But one of the nice things…I usually go with a gang of friends to these places. And that actually really helps because, for example, in Naples, I had city fatigue after a couple of days and when we went out for an island trip where the others went to visit Pompeii. And so I didn’t actually go to see Pompeii, but one of my characters takes that train trip.
So I asked them what details they could give me. And the funniest little details come out where one person says, ‘I remember all of these lemon trees in people’s back gardens.’ And somebody else said, ‘Actually, the train station stank of weed.’
There were just these little things that come up and because I couldn’t do it, they went there, but it’s this personal subjective viewpoint, which makes a big difference.
But yes, I take loads and loads of photos. I usually know where I want to go and where I’m going to set key things. I don’t know if you know about it, but I did the Dan Brown Masterclass. And he says you always have that theatrical set where some major action happens.
So, for example, it could be the Louvre or it could be whatever. And in my case, in this new book, it’s the castle on the top of Salzburg which looks across the whole city. But I need to know if you can throw someone off a tower up there and the only way of doing that was by…
Jo: Taking your husband?!
Jill: He’s already nervous. Why do you think he doesn’t want to go?
Jo: Well, I think that’s fascinating. And you said you’ve got all these books on your desk with all these little research things in.
How do you share those things with your readers?
Jill: Oh, that’s a good question. I tend to hold the view that you need to be a sensory writer in order to take people there, you’ve got to make them feel the textures of the walls, the heat of the sand, the smell of the wine, whatever it might be. So it’s very much a kind of sensory thing.
But it’s also the kind of juxtaposition of these things. I remember being in Rome and looking down at the Colosseum and just thinking this is extraordinarily beautiful. How can you actually conjure this up?
And at the same time, there were two pigeons, either having a fight or having sex, I’m not sure what they were up to, in a tree behind me. And putting those two things together just brings that moment back.
I interviewed a fascinating woman years ago who told me she traveled around India in the 1960s on her own collecting Moulage, which is a kind of wax representation of skin diseases.
Jo: Oh, my goodness.
Jill: I know. But she became the Moulage of repute. She had a museum here in Zurich and so on. But she traveled around in the 1960s on her own. And to remember where she’d been and what she’d seen and so on, she wrote a haiku every day.
I remember her saying to me, ‘A haiku is very concentrated. It’s like Nescafe, but it brings it all back for you in an instant.’ I don’t write poetry, and I don’t write haiku’s, but little notes like that about the pigeons and the Colosseum at the same time, it makes it stick in your mind somehow.
Jo: Although, I hope no one would ever offer you Nescafe in Rome?!
Jill: Oh, I wouldn’t accept it.
Jo: Exactly, definitely not. We’ve talked a little bit about home. And in fact, you actually said home in Wales. So that was quite an interesting thing there.
Given that you’ve lived so many places, I wonder about being an outsider. I kind of obsess about this and about the idea of the Other because when we write about different places, we’re generally writing as an outsider and we’re trying to distill the essence of a place.
I sometimes feel like there is this issue with stereotypes. And sometimes perhaps we write to underline something that we think we know. But I also think that maybe we see a certain truth as an outsider that people who live there can’t see.
What do you feel about this outsider perspective and writing books about cultures that aren’t your own?
Jill: I think that’s a very good point. I would agree completely with that. I’m going to be honest and say that from the books that I’ve written about Beatrice Stubbs, which is all the different crime stories in different European places, she is an outsider.
She’s an older woman who comes from London. She ventures into all these new places with wide eyes and a bit wet behind the ears. She sees it as a stranger which gives me a certain amount of license.
But at the same time, you’re right to say… Sometimes a stranger can see things that an insider can’t. And I think that one of the things I’m aware of and I need to be careful here is that having been… I’ve been in Switzerland now since 2004. And gradually, you start to change and you become a little bit Swiss-er, I suppose.
So I’m conscious of that as well that my British mentality has now been my… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like the Swissness has kind of come around it like a Scotch egg. That’s probably the best way I can describe it.
But yes. So you have two different perspectives. You’ve got the British perspective and you’ve got the Swiss perspective and you’re a halfway house between the two. I remember returning to the UK a little while ago and saying something about…I can’t even remember what it was. Oh, I know what it was about. Chili peppers. And I said, ‘Jalapeno peppers.’
My friends all burst out laughing and said, ‘They’re called jalapeno peppers. What are you talking about?’ And it’s that sort of thing that, here, you have to pronounce things properly. If it’s a Spanish word, you pronounce it in Spanish. That’s made me change a little bit. So yes, I agree with you completely. You’re an outsider but you’re also an insider at the same time.
I think also I would say that when I first came here, I was so desperately, desperately missing my writing crew back in Britain. And after a couple of months of moaning, I just decided, “Well, you can either whinge about it or you can set your own thing up.” So that’s what I did.
I put out feelers for other writers and now we’ve got a huge, vivid community here of all sorts of people running workshops and making e-zines and so on.
So you become an outside insider in another way by finding your group of people. And I’m not saying this is all bored housewives or anything like that. It’s basically a huge international multicultural group of people who are all… The one thing that brings us together is that we’re all writers. So, yes, you create your own kind of communities, I think.
Jo: Yes, absolutely. I love that. And, of course, I visited Zurich and spoke at one of your events.
Jill: You did.
Jo: I appreciated that. So this is Books and Travel.
Apart from your own books, can you recommend a few books either about Mallorca or the Balearics or anything else?
Jill: I think probably I’d want to start with the one I mentioned just a little earlier, which would be, The White Goddess: An Encounter, by Simon Gough. As I said, he’s the great-nephew of Robert Graves and his recollection of the island and the artistry of the town of Deia, in particular, is so vivid, it’s almost cinematic.
I enjoyed his book so much and his raconteur style that I contacted Galley Beggar, his publishers, and I asked them if I could have an interview. I remember calling him at the appointed time and he didn’t answer. So I left it for 10 minutes and I tried again and he picked up the phone and apologized for missing the earlier call and he said, ‘I’m so sorry, my dear. I was dressing a pheasant.’ And I just thought that was so precious.
The second one I would say is…and this is probably not so very complimentary about Mallorca itself. That would be, A Winter in Mallorca, Un hiver à Majorque, by George Sand. And, of course, that was a 19th-century scandal. She was a woman who took a man’s name.
She was living in sin with Frederick Chopin and her two kids. She smoked cigars. She wore trousers. And she was scandalous for Paris, but Mallorca, she was absolutely jaw-dropping. But her perspective is deeply personal because obviously, they went there for his health and that didn’t work out so well.
And a third one…well, there’s no way I can talk about Spanish set books without mentioning The Shadow of the Wind, which was written by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and he died earlier this year. It’s not set on the islands. But it’s set in Barcelona during Franco’s dictatorship.
It’s about a boy whose imagination is sparked by a story he discovers in a cemetery of forgotten books. It’s an all-time favorite because it’s got that kind of…not magical realism. It is realistic. But it’s also imaginative and fantastical. And then also it comes crashing up against that horrible brutality of the Franco regime.
I compared it previously to, Night Train to Lisbon, by Pascal Mercier, which is set in Portugal. And The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco set in Italy. They’re both the same. They’re all about a love affair with books and imagination but set against the backdrop of brutal dictatorships. Now, I’ve just realized all three of those are historical fiction. I’ve just outed myself as an HF fan.
Jo: That’s brilliant.
[I’ll also add my own ARKANE, thriller, Valley of Dry Bones to this list. It features a scene in Palma as Morgan Sierra hunts for an ancient relic that can raise the dead.]
Where can people find you and your books online?
Jill: My website is jjmarshauthor.com. I’m also very active on Facebook. I’ve got a Beatrice Stubbs page, a JJ Marsh page and we do lots of chats and carryings-on over there. And that’s also Facebook / JJ Marsh Author. I’m on Twitter but mostly ranting about politics. And I’m also on Instagram but again, mainly sharing pictures of cows so it’s not that fascinating.
Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jill, that was great.
Jill: Absolute pleasure, Jo. Lovely to talk to you.