[Mary Hoffman]

Start me off with a hard one, why don't you?

It is always ever and only Italy. I was born in the wrong body in the wrong country. If I were on my own I would just re-locate but that's not possible with all the family here so "research trips" or "holidays" as some non-writers like to call them, have to do instead.

I love the language, literature, food, climate, landscape and above all the art, both in the formal sense and the sheer art of living. But I don't like the politics, the bureaucracy or, for the most part, the attitude towards animals though this has improved over the years.

And while I'm here, I go to an Italian Literature class every week, to keep up the language.

The way the research works is this: mostly I have a pretty strong idea of what I want to write and then I do paper research - lots of books from the London Library, articles in journals, which I find in libraries in Oxford and Internet stuff.

When I've written lots of notes and set off down various blind alleys and found odd bits and pieces that could form part of the plots,then I start to plan trips.

But for instance,with City of Secrets, I needed to know about 16th century printing techniques and the best places to see wooden printing presses are in London and Antwerp. So, a day trip to London and a weekend on Eurostar and that was sorted. That book was set in a parallel world version of Padua, so to Padua I went in February of this year for four nights.

But with The Falconer's Knot, I had been to Perugia, Assisi and Gubbio before starting the book and the rest of the research was done from books etc. But I did know I was going to write that book, which made all the difference. For example, I was going to start it in Urbino and we did go there but it was too far away to travel between there and Assisi by horse in a day so I rejected it and moved the action to Perugia.

A lot of plot choices are determined by such mundane considerations!

Mary