Her favourite authors are Stephen King, Michael Marshall and Harlan Coben. Her favourite films are Ghostbusters and The Lost Boys. She loves The Killers, Foo Fighters and Frank Turner. She has never owned a handbag and the last time she wore heels (twelve years ago) she broke a tooth. She called to her partner: ‘These chalk men look really creepy in the dark. In the dark, they looked incredibly sinister. Later that night she opened the back door to be confronted by weird stick men everywhere. One afternoon they drew chalk figures all over the driveway. The Chalk Man was inspired by a tub of chalks a friend bought for her daughter’s second birthday. Her English teacher once told her that if she ‘did not become Prime Minister or a best-selling author’ he would be ‘very disappointed.’ She’s been writing since she was a child but only knuckled down to it properly in her thirties. While writing the Chalk Man she ran a dog-walking business, walking over twenty dogs a week as well as looking after her little girl. She also annoyed Tim Robbins by asking a question about Susan Sarandon’s breasts and was extremely flattered when Robert Downey Junior showed her his chest. Although a terrible presenter, she got to interview acting legends such as Sigourney Weaver, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson and Robin Williams. In the early nineties, she fell into a job as a television presenter for a show on Channel 4 called Moviewatch.

She left school at sixteen and has had a variety of jobs over the years, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, shop assistant, ad agency copywriter and voiceover. Tudor was born in Salisbury and grew up in Nottingham, where she still lives with her partner and young daughter.

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor