:00:00. > :00:00.appeal. More on that in sport later. Right
:00:00. > :00:10.now on BBC News. Ws, it's time for meet the author.
:00:11. > :00:13.Jojo Moyes writes what some people call women's fiction, though that's
:00:14. > :00:19.not a label she particularly likes herself. The latest book is the One
:00:20. > :00:23.Plus One. It's a novel about the gulf between the have and have Notts
:00:24. > :00:28.in modern Britain. We invited her here to be the first guest in our
:00:29. > :00:49.new-look Meet the Author studio. This book I suppose is a road trip,
:00:50. > :00:54.there's Ed and Jess and there's Jess' two children and a very large
:00:55. > :00:58.dog and they take a trip from the south coast of Scotland, very
:00:59. > :01:01.briefly, Jess is who? Jess is a single mother. She's a cleaner.
:01:02. > :01:06.She's the kind of person we don't see a lot of in modern fiction.
:01:07. > :01:12.She's an eternal optimist in the face of events that should really
:01:13. > :01:15.lead her not to be optimistic. Ed? A failed dotcom whiz kid. He had
:01:16. > :01:20.everything, the world at his feet and who made a catastrophic error of
:01:21. > :01:27.judgment and is being prosecuted for insider trading. The kids? Tansie is
:01:28. > :01:31.a maths genius. She's a prodigy. She doesn't really fit into a small
:01:32. > :01:35.seaside town, because she's too quirky and too clever. Jess is very
:01:36. > :01:42.worried about what's going to happen to her when she starts secondary
:01:43. > :01:49.school. She has a 16-year-old half brother. Yes Nicky, you think is a
:01:50. > :01:53.conventional troubled teen, but he's somebody who likes neither football
:01:54. > :01:57.nor musical theatre. He likes to wear eye liner, but he's not
:01:58. > :02:03.necessarily gay. He just doesn't fit into a town and is being persecuted
:02:04. > :02:09.by a local family. You say Ed is a failed dotcom whiz kid, but at
:02:10. > :02:13.beginning of the book he is still successful and he's certainly rich.
:02:14. > :02:17.That's one of the issues in the book, gulf between those who have
:02:18. > :02:22.money and those like Jess who struggle every day. One of the
:02:23. > :02:26.things that's been notable to me in the last few years is the lack of
:02:27. > :02:31.understanding between the haves and have notes. The most contact that a
:02:32. > :02:35.lot of people in my dad's old street with people in the under ?20,000
:02:36. > :02:40.income bracket were their cleaners and that was it. It worries me, this
:02:41. > :02:46.polarisation. I wanted to use that as a back drop for a fictional story
:02:47. > :02:51.without being a political thing. I just think it's something worth
:02:52. > :02:55.exploring. It's definitely an issue, contemporary issue. There are some
:02:56. > :02:59.novelists who start with an issue, ah, this book is going to be about
:03:00. > :03:03.whatever it might be, and they build the whole thing around that. Is that
:03:04. > :03:08.where you started? No, I'm not quite that specific. My books tend to come
:03:09. > :03:11.organically. I tend to have three or four images or ideas that won't
:03:12. > :03:14.leave the front of my head. The thing that I've learned over the
:03:15. > :03:18.years is that you have to write about the thing at the front of your
:03:19. > :03:23.head. They usually end up congealing, that's an unattractive
:03:24. > :03:26.word, but they end up becoming a book. That's what I try to do. In
:03:27. > :03:32.this case, I always wanted to write a road trip. I love road trip films
:03:33. > :03:36.and road trip books. But I wanted to do something about this lack of
:03:37. > :03:41.comprehension between the two sides and what better environment to force
:03:42. > :03:45.two people who don't understand each other's lives together than in a
:03:46. > :03:50.car? Your previous book Me Before You, that is an issue book. That's
:03:51. > :03:55.the issue there is assisted dying But, again, I didn't see it as an
:03:56. > :03:59.issue first. In my own case, I had two members of my family who
:04:00. > :04:04.required 24-hour care at the time the book was devised. You can't live
:04:05. > :04:08.with that kind of issue in your family without having it at the
:04:09. > :04:14.front of your mind. I heard a news item about a young man who persuaded
:04:15. > :04:18.his parents to take him to Dignitas. As a parent, frankly, as a human
:04:19. > :04:22.being, I couldn't understand how they agreed to do it. What I think
:04:23. > :04:25.is interesting as a writer is that dissonance between the brain wanting
:04:26. > :04:29.to be able to say, this is right and this is wrong. And those situations
:04:30. > :04:34.which don't allow it. That's the grey area that I like to explore.
:04:35. > :04:42.Yes, in some ways it's issue based, but it's more human dilemmas than
:04:43. > :04:50.issues,if you like. This is your 12th book, Me Before You was the
:04:51. > :04:54.11th. 10th I think. But th went much further in terms of success. First
:04:55. > :04:58.of all it's going to be made in a Hollywood film. And secondly, in
:04:59. > :05:03.Germany, you are now a superstar best seller, where previously no-one
:05:04. > :05:06.had heard of you. No, I had a publishing deal in Germany many
:05:07. > :05:12.years ago, which pretty much came to nothing. I'd been quietly dropped. I
:05:13. > :05:17.was picked up by my current German publishers and Me Before You has
:05:18. > :05:21.been number one in Germany for 49 weeks apart from one week, where it
:05:22. > :05:26.was knocked off by another of my own books. Germany loves me ah, part
:05:27. > :05:32.from German authors, who probably hate me. What is it about that book,
:05:33. > :05:36.do you think, that broke through? I don't know. It's been 28 weeks on
:05:37. > :05:41.the New York Times list, I say this not to boast, but because something
:05:42. > :05:45.about that book seems to touch people. It just keeps going across
:05:46. > :05:50.the world. I think it's a combination of things. One is that
:05:51. > :05:55.it has two very clear characters who came alive for me, as I wrote them,
:05:56. > :05:58.in a way that not all books do, from page one. It became a very easy book
:05:59. > :06:02.to write because it was about the combination of these two people. But
:06:03. > :06:05.also, it puts the reader in a position where they are forced to
:06:06. > :06:10.ask themselves again and again - what would I do? I quite enjoy that
:06:11. > :06:13.when I'm reading a book. I like having my own assumptions
:06:14. > :06:18.challenged. That's the only explanation I can come up with. Have
:06:19. > :06:23.you tried to replicate that with this book? I don't think you can. If
:06:24. > :06:30.I could replicate it, I would do it with every book. I try to create
:06:31. > :06:34.characters that you feel something for. That seems a bit obvious to
:06:35. > :06:39.say. But I can't write a character unless I really inhabit their shoes.
:06:40. > :06:42.I have to think my way in, a bit like an actor thinks, if that
:06:43. > :06:46.doesn't sound horribly pretentious. That's the way they seem to come off
:06:47. > :06:52.the page for me. I know whether a book is working because that doesn't
:06:53. > :06:56.happen. You realise they're not reacting to a character in the way
:06:57. > :06:59.they should. In some cases I've gone back half a book and stripped out a
:07:00. > :07:03.character because I feel it's not coming alive. You are often
:07:04. > :07:08.described as writing women's fiction, is that a label that makes
:07:09. > :07:12.you cringe? It does slightly. In America, I don't get labelled. In
:07:13. > :07:17.Germany, I don't get labelled. It is called fiction. I do find it really
:07:18. > :07:23.limiting and what's interesting for me, since the Advent of the Kindle
:07:24. > :07:27.and e readers, my male readership has shot up, I know this because I
:07:28. > :07:32.get loads of ermails and messages and tweets, and it's because freed
:07:33. > :07:39.of a marketing climate that says this must look like women's fiction,
:07:40. > :07:44.men feel liberated to read me. They can sit without shame on the Tube
:07:45. > :07:53.and read. Excellent, thank you very much indeed.
:07:54. > :07:59.Hello. It's been another day of sunshine and showers. Tonight, some
:08:00. > :08:03.wintry elements to our weather. There haven't been many of those so
:08:04. > :08:05.far this winter. Ice is a risk, across Northern Ireland and
:08:06. > :08:06.south-west Scotland in