My Favourite Things by Jackie Kabler, Author

Food savoury and sweet

My favourite savoury food has to be curry. I’m slightly obsessed – if I don’t have one good curry a week I get a little sad. And it has to be HOT – no korma here! As for sweet, it’s Cadbury Golden Crisp. It’s widely available in Ireland but virtually impossible to get in the UK so I stock up every time I visit my family in Ireland.

Drink

Champagne, closely followed by Earl Grey tea. I drink gallons of the latter, and as much as I can of the former!

Film

Tricky, but probably Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Book

Aaargh! So hard to choose. The book that stays with me though is The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. It came out (and won the Booker Prize) in 1978 when I was 12 but I didn’t read it until a few years later. I love being near water and I think it was initially the stunning descriptions of the sea which drew me in. I still have my copy, more than thirty years later.

Author

Again – aaargh! But I have read every single book Ian Rankin, John Grisham and Tess Gerritsen have ever written. They can battle it out together!

Holiday destination

New York. I’ve been lucky enough to travel widely for work over the years, and have been to some wonderful and exotic places around the world, but I always want to go back to New York. It just has such a fabulous energy (and, err, excellent shopping). The last time I went was for my birthday in April. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it.

Animal

Dinosaurs. OK, maybe you meant non-extinct animals? I love animals generally (even snakes and spiders). But for a pet I’d love a Russian Blue cat. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have one though, because I’m away so much for work. Maybe one day…

Person

I have lots of fabulous people in my life – my wonderful husband, great family and amazing friends. But if I had to pick one person to see right now, it would be my younger sister Deborah. She died very suddenly six years ago and I still miss her every single day.

Place to write

I write mainly in my dressing room/office at home. But I can write anywhere really – I’ve written parts of my new book on a plane to Tokyo, on a balcony in Italy and in a hotel room in London. As long as it’s quiet, I’m fine. I can’t write with too much music or noise around me.

Piece of clothing

Can I have two favourites? First, these shoes by United Nude. I do wear them, but often I just sit and look at them, like pieces of art. It’s a Dutch brand started by an architect, and you can see that background in the shoe designs.

The other is the pair of earrings my publisher Accent Press gave me to celebrate the release of my debut novel The Dead Dog Day last year. They are perfect miniatures of my book covers.

Inspirational quote

I’m a big motivational quote fan, so it changes all the time, but at the moment it’s “She believed she could, so she did”. I really do think that we can do remarkable things if we truly believe we can. I did a 100km charity race in August – that’s 62 miles or 2.4 marathons non-stop. I’d never done longer than a marathon before and lots of people told me I was crazy to attempt such a long distance. There were times during the event when people were collapsing on the road, and I was utterly exhausted and in pain from head to toe, and I thought yes, those people who told me I was mad were right! But I truly believed I could cross that finish line, and I did. Our minds are so much more powerful than we understand.

Thing in the whole world

OK, we’re back to dinosaurs again. For my 20^th wedding anniversary my husband told me to choose any gift I wanted. I thought about an eternity ring or other nice piece of jewellery, but then realised what I really wanted, had wanted for ages, was a dinosaur fossil. So I got a dinosaur tooth. It’s 98 million years old and is from a Carcharodontosaurus. They were bigger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex and had teeth up to eight inches long. Mine is framed on my writing desk. I adore it.

ABOUT ME

I’m a journalist by trade and spent 20 years working in TV news, mainly for GMTV, ITV and BBC. I’m now a presenter on shopping channel QVC and an author.
My new novel, the second in the Cora Baxter Mysteries series, is called The Deadline Amazon link

My debut novel The Dead Dog Day is available here Amazon link

You can chat to me on Twitter (@jackiekabler),
Facebook (www.facebook.com/jackiekablerauthor) or on my website www.jackiekabler.com.

Thank you so much Jackie for joining us on My Favourite Things
Sincerely
Book Angelx