Write On! interviews author Linda Quinn
Linda Quinn did most of her growing up in a caravan in West Country fields and byways, until she became a child of the State. She was inspired by the written word when she received her first postcard at the age of three and set out to rescue as many books as she could from the local recycling dump. She now gets them anywhere she can.
After working in the music industry, she trained as an actress at East 15 Drama School, and was the founder of Freefall Theatre Company, performing one woman shows and ensemble pieces, and contributing to additional projects with The Magdalena Project in Cardiff, Virginia McKenna, Cristina Castrillo in Switzerland and Linda Marlowe. She also worked as an actress in a variety of small television and film roles.
She created and directed performances as diverse as local community theatre and Manumission Club spectaculars for audiences of 10,000 in Ibiza, and was the co-founder of Pikes Ibiza Literary festival. Throughout this time, she was scripting and editing from improvisations and developing skills that led to writing scripts and an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in London. Her work continues to attract noteworthy attention in the film industry but has yet to reach the screen.
Short stories have been published in various anthologies, including the online Citizens Story at The Word Factory writing community in London. After decades of living in London and teaching Creative Writing at City Lit, she now lives in France. Her debut novel The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends was published in 2025 after winning the Pen to Print Book Challenge and has recently won the BookLife Literary Fiction award. She is a Finalist for the Booklife book of the year.
WO: How would you describe your writing to someone new to it?
LQ: An obsession with reading aloud and exploring sound brought me to performance, and part of my practice was ‘acting to the page’ as I did the research and found my characters. When I reflect on the process of creating The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends – and now the second book – I realised I’m still doing that ‘acting to the page’. I still have to find the characters by the same route: a journal, clothes, walking – see what I notice in the world when I look through their eyes. I first wrote TTM & TKOE for performance. I wanted to write about a small community, misunderstandings and prejudices and the impact. A time before social media, when the community and its institutions were the media.
WO: Can you tell us a bit about The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends?
LQ: As I said, TTM & TKOE was written for performance, as a film script. The two central characters were based on people I knew in my childhood. I started daydreaming about them, seeing them in a garden. At first, I thought it was a grandfather and his granddaughter, and he was teaching her about gardening. Then scenes started arriving of them outside the garden, in their individual lives. They weren’t related. Each scene I’d put up on the wall. I thought it was never going to make sense at all, and there were some very dark scenes. But I loved these characters and felt compelled to make sense of their world. I reorganised and added scenes until the story, their emotional through-line, became clear, and I began to understand.
WO: What inspired you to write in the first place, and what inspires you now?
LQ: Going back to what I said earlier about the link between early obsessions from sound, I think I’ve realised I was completely in love with writers. They offered a route to transformation. I wasn’t a carefree child, and books gave me access to different worlds and ideas that allowed me to escape and often possible solutions I could return with. As I began to realise these other worlds were created by people that were writers, those writers took on the role of benevolent gods. I never thought I could be one. But I so loved reading out loud, often to myself, just so I could literally feel myself embody the text. I still feel that now.
WO: Write On! recently explored the theme of ‘(R)Evolution’ comparing natural, gradual changes with swift and radical ones. Do you view your own writing as having gently evolved over time? Or do you enjoy switching it up and trying new things regularly?
LQ: I think my ‘work’ with words and language has slowly evolved over time. It took me many years of reading and performing to feel sufficiently confident to generate and share my own words. I went through quite a long period of writing, where I was just trying to sound like a writer. I bored myself but, nonetheless, was compelled to keep writing. I think the notion of ‘acting to the page’ is what helped. As an actress, I loved improvising, and I kept freewriting journals for my characters. It helped to find what was going on inside. Once I started writing backstories for my characters in scripts – and didn’t think too much – I started to realise a sense of my writing voice. Going to workshops and responding to prompts really helped, particularly those where you read your work back immediately, before editing. I found it really terrifying at first, but that intensity sharpened my senses and I found the words in a way I’d had as an actor and as a child.
WO: What one piece of advice would you give an aspiring writer?
LQ: Well, I taught creative writing for a long time, so honestly, I’m a complete nerd when it comes to talking about writing. But if I’m allowed to give just one piece of advice, it has to be: don’t even think about spelling and grammar – write from the very heart of you! All the editing, shaping, etc comes with the rewriting; that’s when you use all the techniques and tools (and you’ll absorb those through listening and reading).
WO: Question from Instagram user: @madeleinefwhite What made you decide to enter the Pen to Print Book Challenge?
LQ: I think coming to terms with my lack of confidence and also fear. The fear that I’d never write this book, or any other. I’d trained and worked as an actor and a director. I’d written scripts. I did an MA in Creative Writing and I taught it for a long time. I wrote a lot. I’d written a draft of The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends. I’d read some of the ‘standalone’ chapters to audiences. I’d talked about writing this book for many years. Though people were very positive, I became more and more overwhelmed and needed to ask for help. However, during the pandemic, I joined Ian Ayris’s online writing group. His approach helped me ask the right questions of myself. I also signed up for any creative writing prompt sessions available and there were a lot!
WO: Can you tell us anything about future projects?
LQ: As I got to know the characters in The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends, I wrote a lot of their stories down, so that I knew them in the context of April’s story. It’s where I got a bit lost for a while, in their stories. I had to cut so much. I want to tell their stories now. I was a big fan of Enid Blyton, and later Balzac and, nowadays, Marilynne Robinson, Emer Martin and Jonathan Franzen. I like novels that join up and explore the world from many perspectives. I feel privileged to have told April’s story in a way that has affected people and some of the messages and reviews I’ve had have made me realise I was able to achieve my intention. I’ve been selected for the Granta Novel Writing workshop which I’ve just started. I’m waiting for one character to take the lead, but until then I’m working with all of them, what they bring. They all have something to tell us. And April’s story isn’t finished yet.
WO: Lastly, if you could choose one fictional animal/creature to be a pet or companion, who would it be and why?
LQ: I think it would be Mr Tumnus from the C.S. Lewis’s Tales Of Narnia. He has hope and faith and proves to be a most loyal and trustworthy
friend – come what may. He’s also very homely and believes in miracles. I read the whole series to my children twice, and again to my grandchildren.
You can connect with Linda Quinn on Instagram: @ikanto, X: @ikanto121 and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ikanto121/
The Toffee Man & The Kingdom Of Ends by LK Quinn is available to buy from all good bookstores and online, including all Amazon stores in paperback and e-book. Connect with Linda on Instagram: @ikanto
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Issue 27 of Write On! is out now and you can read it online here. Find it in libraries and other outlets. You can find previous editions of our magazines here.
You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.
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