Lara asked Joey Paul:

What inspires you most to write?

Joey Paul I have been writing since I was 19 and had been retired from my job for medical reasons. For a long time, writing had been an escape for me during my school years and it became that even more so once I was faced with a lifetime of being sick, in pain and unable to hold down a more conventional office job. Life pretty much inspires me to keep writing. I always find more things I want to explore, more places I want to take my characters and more plots that need to be teased out of my mind and put on the page. I have people I look up to as writers - Sue Grafton, Harlan Coben, Kathy Reichs and Sophie Kinsella, to name a few - but I also have people in my every day life that inspire me to keep going. My best friend became my carer when I got sick and having now been friends for over 20 years, she is the closest person to me. She sees me through the ups and the downs, and she's the one who takes what I've written and makes the awesome front covers. She inspires me to keep going whether it's through making me a cup of tea, or helping me work through plot holes and writer's block. Her daughter, now eleven, also inspires me. She's always been someone who loves being creative whether that's drawing like her mum, or writing like me, and it's because of her that I keep doing what I do. I am very lucky to have the people in my life that I have, and I keep going for them, but also for myself. I love writing. I love every aspect of it to varying degrees, and I have so many stories to tell that I just can't imagine doing anything else.

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