What's more perfect than an author that offers the perfect book to curl up with in the Winter and lounge about with in the Summer? Karen Swan is that author. Transporting us to a historical romance (we adore The Wild Isle Series) then delivering a cosy winter love story in turn. Her books are intense, gripping and escapist reads that are perfect for every season and we're thrilled to introduce her as LoveReading's September Author of the Month.

We're afraid however that you're going to have to wait until February for Karen's latest beautiful book, Three Summers, but we promise you, that it'll be worth the wait. It takes us to a tiny Puglian fishing port in Italy for a sweeping new romance, and it's absolutely divine. Find out more about it, Karen's writing process and favourite recent reads below. And don't forget that you can pre-order it now with LoveReading, but make sure you grab a glass of primitivo or grappa to sip as you read as it'll transport you straight to Puglia in 1957 for a Summer of Innocence. A Summer you'll never forget.

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Karen Swan is the Sunday Times and international best-selling author of twenty-nine books which have sold over 5 million copies around the world. A prolific author, she writes two novels a year and her books are known for their evocative locations. Karen sees travel as vital research, and likes to set deep, complicated love stories within twisting plots.

A former fashion editor, she lives in Sussex, England with her family and three dogs.

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Now, over to Karen for our LoveReading Q&A.

What was your favourite book from childhood, and do you still have it?

The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann and, incredibly, yes, I do still have it! I was obsessed with any books about animals, but particularly dogs, when I was young. I’ve actually held on to a lot of books from my own childhood and it brought me great joy to then read them with my children. It was astonishing how familiar the images were in the picture books especially, as if I’d just read them last year.

We understand that you began your career in fashion journalism, working at Tatler and Vogue (I started my career at Conde Nast too!). When did you first start writing fiction and what made you think, ‘I want to be an author’?

The funny but scary thing about my career as a fiction author is that it is entirely accidental. I am an avid reader, and I knew I loved the process of writing as a journalist, but it never once occurred to me to blend those interests and leanings together. It was actually the literary agent for a non-fiction book I was working on as a freelance project after my first son was born who recommended that I give it a try. I don’t know what prompted her to suggest it, but the moment I wrote a fictitious scene I knew without doubt it was what I was supposed to do. It made complete sense to my brain, and I realized I’d been telling stories in my head my whole life – I just thought everyone did that!

Can you show us a picture of your favourite book cover ever, and share why it’s your favourite?

Three Summers

I’m not putting Three Summers here because it’s my latest book – this is genuinely my favourite cover ever. It was the first time I’d been shown a cover for one of my stories and really felt like it encapsulated the tone and quality of the writing inside. Covers are so key for authors because to us the story is just a really long word document that is then edited into shape, formatted and given a ‘face’ – but oftentimes that face doesn’t quite fit with what’s inside, but is shaped more by marketing and branding considerations. This cover absolutely reflects the story within: continental summer; ripe lushness; nostalgia. 

Can you tell us a bit about your writing process? A little birdy told us you write in a treehouse overlooking the Downs, which we are dying to see a picture of by the way! Do you have any other writing habits?

Sadly, the treehouse is in my old home, which we left seven years ago, but I had long since learnt to write anywhere and everywhere, anyway. It was lovely having a writing refuge in the trees when I first began writing books, but as the publishing pace took off and I moved up to writing two books a year, it was just a matter of getting the words down. In the past decade, I’ve written on planes, in leisure centres, cafes . . . although I’ve never written in bed, thinking about it now. These days I write in a beautiful study in my home which I have decorated completely to my own taste (husband and children totally ignored), so that it feels like a luxury to hide out there. When I get to my intensive writing phase, which lasts six to eight weeks, I’ll commit to writing 3,000 words a day, five days a week. It’s gruelling, but it gets the first draft down, and then I can stop panicking, take a breath and begin my edits.

You are an incredibly prolific writer. You write two books each year – one for the summer period and one for the Christmas season. Where do you find your inspiration for each book?

This was one of the great advantages of coming to writing fiction from journalism – I was already schooled in the disciplines of writing to a brief, a wordcount and a deadline, but it also taught me to be constantly on the lookout for ideas. They can come from an offhand comment from a friend, a line in a newspaper, a magazine feature, an interview on the radio . . . Each of these examples has triggered a book idea for me – the trick is to notice in the moment that your interest has been piqued and to jot it down. I’ve trained my brain to do a conscious ‘aha!’ whenever I say ‘really?’ to something. It need only be the vaguest notion of an idea, but it can always be finessed and developed into something more.

Your books are known for their evocative locations, and we know you see travel as vital research. Have you got a favourite place on the planet, and which of your books takes you there?

Scotland has my heart – specifically the Highlands and Islands. The landscape is epic and ancient, noble and majestic, but also mournful, tragic, merciless and forlorn. The weight of history sits heavily there, and I see stories in the castles, the mountains, the mossy rocks. It was daydreaming in Scotland (I’m a MacLeod by birth), that convinced me to commit to writing. I always feel most in my body and mind when I’m up there.

Your forthcoming book Three Summers is no different, and we are taken on a journey to Tricase Porto, Puglia in Italy. It’s an utterly divine story set amongst the lemon trees. Tell us all about it.

The story is told through three perspectives and over the course of three separate summers. Unlike some books which come to you fully formed, or with a meta-plot, this one revealed itself to me word by word, and it isn’t centred on just one narrative. There was no overarching direction beforehand, other than being struck by this beautiful, tiny Puglian fishing port and the grand villas which sat along the seafront. It made me think about a noble family that returned to the port every summer and their impact on the villagers: the glamour and excitement they brought with them, but also the tension when social boundaries were crossed. I built up a community of characters and found myself with a coming-of-age love triangle, a suffocating sibling rivalry and the chaos that comes when the old order is overtaken by social change, putting money and power in the hands of the old have-nots. 

What is your favourite piece of advice or feedback received with regard to your writing?

Whenever the story touches someone, quite literally. If I make them laugh or, better, cry. If they lose track of time sitting in the chemotherapy chair. If the characters live on in their head and feel like real friends after they read the last page. These are all the things that thrill me and let me know I’ve done my job in making the words come alive. There’s nothing better.

Which genre of books do you like to read? What have you read and loved recently?

I love to read most genres. I do have a preference for modern historical books, by which I mean anything set in the past hundred years. I like the mental challenge of thrillers, but too often it’s all plot and not enough emotional connection for me; I do need a bloodied beating heart in my books. I’ve just read Gabriels’ Moon, a spy novel by William Boyd, and a rerelease of Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali. I loved The Muse by Jessie Burton, and I inhaled The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier, a time-slip epic set on Murano island, Venice. I’m currently reading Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante. She’s the favourite writer of my favourite writer, Elena Ferrante, so I don’t doubt I’m going to love it.

What do your bookshelves look like at home? Do you have a favourite? We love a book shelfie.

I have so many bookshelves, it’s ridiculous. In my study, I keep my books and the foreign editions. I then, throughout the house, have bookcases which are roughly subdivided into children’s books, my research books, more everyday commercial reads which I regularly cull to keep space free, and then the classics I would rescue from a house fire. I did an English degree, so I have everything from George Eliot and Jane Austen to Chaucer and Middle English carols, sitting alongside my husband’s complete sets of Ian Fleming’s Bond and P. G. Wodehouses.

We know it’s like asking about which child is your favourite, but what is your desert island book, and why is it your must-have read?

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. It’s a novella, centred around a young girl summering with her grandmother on a tiny skerry in the Finnish archipelago. There’s no electricity, no running water, nothing but rocks, moss, trees and sea. The girl’s mother has died and the father, whilst there, is very much off the page. Instead, we see an old woman at the end of her life and a child at the beginning of hers. Their connection is fierce and raw and tender; they are unapologetic, quarrelsome and so stubborn, yet their love for one another is unconditional and infinite. Subsumed in nature, it fully depicts wild, free femininity and unbridled imagination. A jewel of a book.

What piece of advice would you give to anyone thinking about writing a book?

Do it! Don’t tell everyone you’re going to do it – just get the words down, read it through, and, as mercilessly as you can, edit it. Then ask a few people you trust to read it and give their feedback. Listen to what they say and take on board their constructive criticism. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the instinct is to clutch our work close to us and not have others distort it, but editing is vital, so look upon it as a polishing process. 

What is next for you in terms of travelling. And writing?

I’m currently writing my book for next winter. It has a dual plotline and is set in present-day Switzerland on the banks of Lake Geneva and the summer of 1962 in Paris. I’m doing a lot of research into the political landscape of that time, which, as ever, I’m finding fascinating. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not so much a writer as a repressed historian!

You can follow Karen Swan on your favourite social channels

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swannywrites

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenSwanAuthor

X: https://x.com/KarenSwan1