In my new novel Masquerade, the heroine Luz is a writer. She works on commission, writing biographies of notable figures.

A Cambridge graduate, her first commission was penning the biography of an ancestor for one of the great families in the Highlands of Scotland. With that book now complete, she has returned to her homeland of Spain, and is keen to find a job that will allow her to stay:

She could feel that Spain was where she was meant to be, where she was always meant to be. Here, she could breathe, feel her body come alive under the Spanish sun, and let all the pent-up, reckless instincts she had tried so hard to tame all through boarding school in England run wild and free.

Serendipity leads her to a job advertisement for a biographer working in her home town of Cádiz and its vicinity, and ona subject that interests her greatly: modern art. This is her big break if she wants to establish herself as a serious biographer in Spain – and she does, because Luz is proud and ambitious.

The subject of the biography is Count Eduardo Raphael Ruiz de Salazar, a famous Spanish Surrealist, and the man hiring is his nephew, Andrès de Calderon. But it turns out that Andrès is no easy potential employer to impress.

For the characterisation of Luz, it was important to me that she be a strong and independent heroine. She is making a life for herself in Spain in the early 1970s, a time of great social change when women were securing new rights; she is the embodiment of the new woman. When it comes to interviewing for the biographer job, I wanted her to demonstrate acute business acumen, a fighting spirit, professionalism, passion and talent in her chosen profession.

Which means Andrès de Calderon, who has investigated his potential hire’s work history closely and is ready to challenge her walking out of an early biographer assignment, has met his match! Still, that won’t stop him testing Luz by inserted a particularly unfavourable clause in the work contract, giving him the right to potentially take copyright of Luz’s writing. How will Luz, spirited, enflamed, strong modern woman, react to a man attempting to rob her of her rights? You can be sure of fireworks!

Readers of my other novels will notice a theme emerging in my writing: my heroines all have careers, even at times when that was not the norm for women. Coral in Burning Embers is a photographer. Venetia in The Echoes of Love is a mosaic restoration specialist. Alexandra in Indiscretion is a romance novelist.

Luz is Alexandra’s daughter, and has inherited her way with words. But I wanted to differentiate between mother and daughter. Where Alexandra has channeled her writing ability into pure creativity and fictional worlds, Luz is much more grounded and businesslike, and has picked a very well-respected profession (there are even awards for biographies, such as the Whitbread Prize in the UK and the Pulitzer in the US). It’s an interesting contrast between the two, given that in many ways Luz is the more spirited, more impassioned – the one you’d perhaps more associate with romance.

What makes Luz’s work interesting in the context of the novel is that her job is to root out the truth: to research and delve and investigate the artist Count Eduardo Raphael Ruiz de Salazar tirelessly, until she can write an honest, detailed and thorough account of his life. But can Luz similarly root out the truth in other aspects of her life? Can she see the reality beyond the masquerade? Can the professional biographer turn her talent and skills to her own personal life? The answers lie within Masquerade…