A few weeks ago, I had an exciting invitation. Audible, the UK’s largest providers of digital audiobooks, were launching a Listening Club. Once a month they would select one title to invite readers to discuss. They had decided to launch the club with the audio version of my debut novel Beside Myself, narrated by the wonderful Lisa Coleman. Would I be available to come to their London studio to take part in a recorded discussion with a small group of listeners to help get the conversation started?

The studios were in one of a number of glamorously converted warehouses near the Barbican. Brightly decorated, with bird-print wallpaper on the kitchen ceiling and large breakout spaces containing foosball and table-tennis tables, they were a world away from the tiny cluster of little black booths where I recorded the audiobook of  The World Between Two Covers in 2015.

They also contained the most beautiful piece of book-related art I have ever seen: Storylines, a huge reworking of the London Underground map, with book titles replacing station names. I was amused to find that the novels populating the area of north London in which I grew up seemed particularly dark, and included The Exorcist and Psycho.

The experience of talking about your work with readers can be mixed. Although it’s always nice to hear that people have engaged with your work, you often find yourself answering the same questions over and over again. When it comes to Beside Myself, a psychological drama about twins who get trapped in the wrong lives, I rarely get through a conversation without having to explain that I’m not a twin and that I have never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, unlike the main character of the novel.

This discussion was entirely different. Attended by three listeners, among them my friend, writer Rosie Fiore, who had received an invitation entirely by chance, and chaired by Audible editorial assistant Holly Newson, it explored many of the novel’s themes in great depth: nature versus nurture, the role of education and whether personality consists of what we are or of what others project onto us.

I particularly enjoyed talking about what the audio form can add to a novel, as my experience has been that narrator Lisa Coleman brought a huge amount of interpretative richness to the text. Indeed, as I explained in the discussion, it was her idea to make some of the voices in the central character’s head those of people in the novel – an extra layer that had not occurred to me.

The first Listening Club question went up on the Audible UK Facebook page yesterday and the recording of the discussion will be released soon. Watch this space!