The Midnight Child features Grace Cooper, who after moving back to her childhood home, suffers from bouts of sleepwalking and flashbacks to the disappearance of her brother Simon, who vanished one night when he was a child. Plagued by mysterious memories, Grace sets of out to unearth what happened that evening and discover what happened to her younger brother but ends up uncovering more family secrets than she cares to know, resulting in her world being turned upside down and everything she thought she knew about who she was, tipped on its head.

I have always been fascinated by anything to do with sleep. I suffer from terrible night terrors and sleep paralysis as does my son and sister. It holds such mystery for me as we have so little control over our minds and bodies once the sandman whisks us away to the land of nod, so writing this story felt like the next obvious step for me. Although I have never found myself outside as Grace does, when sleepwalking, I have had such vivid awful dreams that I can still recall them many years afterwards.

The target audience for my books is anybody who enjoys reading a good mystery thriller. I don’t write with any particular age or gender in mind and hope that my books are enjoyed by a diverse range of readers, especially the readers of The Authors’ Lounge who may or may not have come across my writing before.

I would class The Midnight Child as a domestic noir and hope that anybody who like me, suffers from sleep related issues, can identify with Grace’s nighttime struggles. I believe that for many authors, writing can be a way of unburdening themselves and that is most certainly the case for me. In the book, Grace’s mother suffers from dementia and writing about it was cathartic for me as my mother had dementia, a chronic and cruel disease. I hope that I did it justice as everyone’s experience of dementia is different. I wrote about it using my personal knowledge and like to think that it shows as I describe Sylvie, Grace’s mother, in the book. She is a poor tormented soul who has snatches of normality in her life which vanish as quickly as they arrive leaving her bewildered and frightened.

I hope that The Midnight Child goes from strength to strength as I am particularly fond of this book. It didn’t take me too long to write – about 4 to 5 months – but due to my personal links with it, I would like to see it do well and resonate with readers in the same way it resonates with me.

The Midnight Child is my 12^th book and I have no plans to slow down with my writing. My 13^th book is due to be released in June 2022 and I am currently on with writing the one after that. Aside from spending time with my family, I live for writing and getting those stories out there!

When I’m not writing, I work three days in a primary school in the North East of England close to where I live with my husband Richard and dog, Theo. I have four adult children and three grandchildren so my life is pretty busy! We live in a village near the River Tees which was the inspiration for my first book, Undercurrent.

I love interacting with readers and am always on social media ready to chat! You can find me on Twitter at – https://twitter.com/thewriterjude or Facebook at – facebook.com/thewriterjude

Occasionally I visit Instagram (although not as often) and can be found at https://www.instagram.com/jabakerauthor/

Please feel free to contact me and we can chat about books or anything that takes your fancy. My books are often described as dark and sometime heavy going but I promise you, I’m a light-hearted soul and not the dark brooding individual many think I am!

Judith Baker

My books are listed on Kobo, Apple, Google Books and Amazon where I have a profile that gives readers a little bit more information about me and my books.