My First Time...with Lydia Ruffles

After graduating with a degree in theatre and a postgraduate diploma in public relations, Lydia Ruffles spent a decade working in corporate communications in between travels. She is a graduate of the acclaimed Faber Academy and lives in London. The Taste of Blue Light is her first novel.

Here's the blurb for The Taste of Blue Light

These are the things Lux knows: She is an artist. She is lucky. She is broken. These are the things she doesn't know: What happened over the summer. Why she ended up in hospital. Why her memories are etched in red. 'The nightmares tend to linger long after your screams have woken you up ...'

Desperate to uncover the truth, Lux's time is running out. If she cannot piece together the events of the summer and regain control of her fractured mind, she will be taken away from everything and everyone she holds dear. If her dreams don't swallow her first.

Describe the exact moment you decided to write your book?

The first seed of the idea came from looking at Rothko paintings at Tate Modern while I was ill. Not recommended but the strange, hallucinatory experience I had set me on the path to discovering the story of The Taste of Blue Light. I started writing it months later around the time that I was diagnosed with a neurological condition, and wrote the first draft in three months in between migraines and MRIs.

What’s the one thing you wish you’d known before starting to write your book?

Nothing – I’m someone who reads the guide book on the way home from a trip rather than before so I loved discovering my own path through the process. I learned I had to switch off the moral ambivalence that some of us develop to cope with the world; I needed to realise the importance for myself rather than be told it before I started.

What’s your go-to procrastination method?

‘Research.’