Hi Anthony, I'm greatly looking forward to reading The Empress of Ice Cream, which will be released in just a few short weeks. And I was thrilled to find the first chapter of the book available to read on your website. It definitely whets the appetite, no pun intended. However, being a fan of stories set at Louis XIV's Versailles, one thing struck me as unusual. In 1671, Madame de Montespan had been Louis' mistress for four years, was in the prime of her beauty and was entering the zenith of her power. Yet in the excerpt, no mention is made of her. Rather, Louise de LaValliere -- the mistress whom Madame de Montespan had already replaced in Louis' heart -- is mentioned in passing and Olympe Mancini, an even older royal love interest, seems to have been given the role of the sexiest seducer at Versailles. Don't get me wrong: I love the scene in which she beckons Carlo to fill her bathtub with his creations, which is a very imaginative passage. However, why did La Montespan, the "It Girl" of the time, not get a bigger part in the Versailles portion of your novel? Especially since she was not merely a legendary lover, but a legendary gourmand as well! Best of luck with the release! Regards, Harry

Yes, I cheated a little. I decided to simplify the workings of the French court as it's only a very short part of my book. The events I describe as taking place in 1670 are conflated from the period from about 1660 to 1680 - so, for example, the new palace at Versailles wasn't even built when the limonadier Audiger really turned up with his gift of frozen peas.

However I am much more accurate with the English section of the book, which starts with Louise de Keroualle's arrival in England in 1670. 

Whether to take liberties with history is always a tough call. I tend to try to stick with the facts until I feel something isn't working. Shaping real events into a story is both the hardest and the most interesting bit, but I tend to come down on the side of saying the story takes precedence, so long as the changes aren't too obvious. 

However, I draw a distinction between making up facts and re-arranging them - the major events and figures of my story are real, even if the narrative I use to join them up is conjecture.  

Hello Anthony, im a musician so i feel i have a strong creative side. Im starting to write fiction but i'm finding the process hard. Is there any advice you can give me? Thank you, Marc Hayes

Hi Marc,

I get asked this a lot, and I wish I had an answer. The truth is really that it''s trial and error, and perseverance. A well-established writer once told me that the only difference between published authors and everyone else is that the authors finished their books. There''s something in that.

Writers'' groups are useful, as much for the discipline as the craft. And books on storycraft, such as those by Robert McKee or Christopher Booker, can be good, even though they''re mostly aimed at screenwriters.

Good luck!

Hello Anthony, I so enjoyed your wonderful book "Food of Love" -- especially as the first scene seems to take place at the bar just down the street from where I lived in Rome (the little bar on Viale Glorioso...) -- I lived at Via Calandrelli (up those stairs, across Via Dandolo)!! I'm now looking to replace a copy of your book for a friend who lost hers (lent out and never returned -- now that's a good compliment to the writer I think!) - she had one with the putti on the cover -- is that the first edition? I ask so that I can find the right one through "bookfinders.com". Thanks for such an enjoyable reading experience --I'm looking forward to finding your other books now. All best, Claire

Hi Claire,

yes, that''s the first UK edition - although the second edition had fewer mistakes in the Italian....

best,

Anthony

Would you ever do a book signing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada? And if so, where would it be held? -Jess Noelle

Sorry, too far away I suspect! But I''ll ask my Canadian publisher if they have any plans.....

Last night at our reading group discussion of The Various Flavours of Coffee we all agreed it was a good read. Where did you get the inspiration to write of so many themes in one book.. and why were those themes used?

That''s a big question...

First of all, I''m glad you liked the book. Writing it was an organic process, really - I started with the bare bones of the story (a man falling in love with a slave, and needing to set her free before he could tell whether she really loved him) and a general desire to write about one of the big global food commodities (tea, coffee, spice) of the time, and it gradually took shape as the story evolved. I tried to be guided by what were the most pressing concerns for people like my characters at the time - for example, I didn''t initially intend Emily to be  a suffragette, it just seemed inevitable, eventually, that someone of her mindset would have to be one.

There''s some more information on the genesis of ''Coffee'' in the pages on this website.

Anthony 

Hello, do you do any talks about your books in the oxfordshire area? Thank you

Hi,

I don''t usually do talks, but I do live in Oxfordshire. Is this for a book group, or were you just asking generally? Email me directly using the email address under ''contact'', and I''ll let you know if anything comes up.

Anthony

Fantastic news about your latest book!! Can't wait to read it!!!

Best regards from Croatia! Me and my girlfriend read two of your italian-food-and-travel books, and got really opsessed with the idea of spending this summer vespa-driving through the south of italy, from naples to sicily. of course, eating in village restaurants and trying to find the best melanzana alla parmigiana. can you reccomend some stops in that part of italy with good restaurants, or some places that had a good impresion on you? mario&vanja

Hi Mario and Vanja,

I''ve written articles recently about where to eat in Tuscany, and where to eat in south-east Sicily, and slightly longer ago about Naples. The easiest way to get the articles is via The Times Online, doing a search for ''Capella''. If you get to Sicily, I strong suggest that you visit Syracuse - the old town, Ortigia, is a really lovely, laid back place with great seafood, and the local towns such as Ragusa and Noto are stunning.

best,

Anthony

Hi Anthony I don't really have a question but I needed to tell you how grateful I am you are writing another novel:) I am working for Penguin books in SA and we are the distributors for Little Brown. I have been selling your books for years and only dipped into Food of Love years ago when it came out. Well on leave in April I decided to read the Wedding Officer and fell in love with the characters and the food!! It made me hungry all the time. So you can imagine my surprise when I started work on Monday and see you have a new one out later in the year. I have the manuscript and cannot wait to start reading tonight. Thanks for writing wonderful books and also for making my life easier with that illusive budgets. I hope you don't mind but you will be hearing from my marketing department through the right channels. Kind regards Sonja Vorster

Thank you Sonja - I''m really fortunate to have great publishers across the world. Let me know what you think of it - it takes a rather different approach from the previous books, and I''m always nervous about how people who have liked the others will react to that......  

Hi Anthony, I'm doing an assignment for my Masters in Creative Writing at Portsmouth Uni and have chosen the title 'The literary effects of placing English characters in an overseas setting'. This gives me a great excuse to include 'The Wedding Officer' and 'The various flavours of coffee', which I thoroughly enjoyed. I just wondered what your thoughts are, as the author, on the positives and challenges of taking your characters out of their comfort zones and putting them in an 'exotic' setting? I'm also trying to weave in a way of including 'The Food of Love' in there too - its still one of the most delicious books I've ever read! Really looking forward to 'The Empress of ice cream'... Thanks, Ann

Hi Ann,

Interesting question, and I''ll try to give it a serious answer.

I suppose the answer will differ from writer to writer. For me, it relates to what I''ve written elsewhere about food being a metaphor with many different meanings. In the Wedding Officer it''s clear that James Gould is a product of a certain repressed, blinkered, British-Empire-public-school upbringing. War brings him forcibly - even unwillingly - into contact with a completely different culture; food (and its close cousin sex) are the means by which one culture breaks down another, opening his eyes to a different set of values - with the comic twist that he''s the officer responsible for repressing that more sensual, forgiving culture amongst his own side''s troops. 

Something similar is true for Laura in the Food of Love - although she isn''t repressed, she is ripe for an adventure in a foreign country very different from her own (there are some brief mentions of her backstory, and particularly her mother, that support this.) - she feels, deep down, that there''s something wrong with dating other ex-pats in Rome. 

Coffee is a little bit different - the jungle has a different value system from Robert''s, certainly, but it isn''t so much that he adopts those values as that Africa, and the jungle, and Fikre, are the ''oven'' that ''roasts'' his green, naieve self into something that is both more bitter but also potentially more mature. And, of course, it''s in the jungle that he comes across real humanity and unselfishness for the first time, amongst the Oromo. (There''s a point late in the book where someone says somethimng about the law of the jungle, meaning Darwinian dog-eat-dog; he replies that from his experience of jungles, their laws are considerably more complex than that.)

It isn''t necessary to go abroad in order to get this kind of conflict, but it certainly brings it into focus. And of course, on a very basic level, it''s interesting for the reader to learn about different cultures. Hollywood uses the phrase ''fish out of water'' to describe a certain kind of culture-clash story: it''s also very relevant to novels. Christopher Booker, in his The Seven Basic Plots,  uses the phrase ''voyage-and-return'' to  describe coming-of-age stories: it''s clearly easier to plot that kind of archetype if you are dealing with an actual voyage.

Interestingly, The Empress of Ice Cream does this in reverse - it takes an Italian and a Frencwoman, and brings them to England.  

You might be interested to read one of my favourite books - ''Brother of the More Famous Jack'' by Barbara Trapido, the middle section of which takes place in Italy. There are echoes of that book in all of my books so far. 

best, Anthony