Adrienne Chinn was born in an old paper-making town in the middle of Newfoundland in the middle of a snowstorm, late as usual. She grew up in rural Quebec, spent her teenage years in Montreal, and, after taking a MA in English Literature in Windsor, Ontario (where the best thing was the view across the river to Detroit), and a brief tenure as an editor on a textile machinery trade magazine (how do you make a knitting machine sound interesting?), retraced her English father’s footsteps back to England.

Failing to secure a job in journalism or publishing during a recession, she found work as a freelance film and TV researcher, where she did everything from finding contestants for quiz shows, acted in pilot TV shows, did film extra work, and sourced Spitfires for a TV movie. All without owning a TV (or telly, as she has learned to say). She met lots of lovely, mad people too, many of whom are still friends.

Switching gears, and deciding to “be her own boss”, she retrained as an interior designer, and has run an interior design business in London for the past 20 years. She now travels abroad regularly to speak at international design shows and colleges (Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan, China, Morocco, Canada), teaches interior design part-time in London, and leads design retreats in her beloved Morocco, which she has been visiting for over ten years.

But, she never gave up writing. She attended the Faber Academy Novel Writing course in 2011; many, many writing workshops and festivals; fielded hundreds of rejections (seriously), until the door finally opened in 2018, with Avon UK’s offer to publish her first two novels.

Life is interesting. Now all she needs is a dog. And a swimming pool.

And chocolate.