Best-selling author Joanne Harris talks to Hannah Stephenson about the trials and tribulations of writing The Lollipop Shoes, the follow-up to her novel, Chocolat, which was made into a hit film starring Juliette Binoche, and how she keeps her favourite shoes just to look at

Her bestselling novel, Chocolat, became a publishing and film hit - and at one point Joanne Harris doubted she would ever write a sequel. After the success of the film, which starred Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Alfred Molina and raised Harris' profile as an author, writing a follow-up looked like a difficult feat.

But the former teacher, who writes from her Victorian home near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was unfazed and has brought back chocolatier Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk in The Lollipop Shoes, a continuation of the story.

It's not a sequel, says Harris, whose bestsellers include Five Quarters Of The Orange, Coastliners and Gentlemen & Players.

''To me, a sequel is more of the same and would have been set in the same place. This is a completely different scenario in many ways. They are in a different place.''

Set five years later, Vianne has another daughter, Rosette, Anouk has started secondary school and Vianne has learned to conform, but not without sacrifices. She has given up the magic that she and her daughters shared, has changed her identity and has given up on true love, instead considering marriage to her reassuringly conventional landlord.

Then enters Zozie de l'Alba: beautiful, passionate, bohemian and wearer of the 'lollipop' shoes, who befriends Vianne and influences Anouk. But behind her charm lies a malevolent person with an insatiable greed, and Vianne finds herself battling with Zozie to save her impressionable daughter.

Harris feels the latest instalment has movie potential, but is well aware of the years it can take to bring a novel to the big screen.

''I don't want anyone to get excited about the possibility of a film of this because I know that these things take a long time. But if there's a film it would be nice, particularly if we could have the same cast.''

The temptation of chocolate and all its guilty pleasures still features in Harris' latest book, but into it comes another of her own secret pleasures - shoes. While in Chocolat, chocolate was the metaphor for kindness and nurturing, The Lollipop Shoes, a much darker tale, focuses on footwear as the primary disguise for the seemingly charming femme fatale.

''The shoes she wears reflect the kind of person she is. If you can tell the character of somebody by the chocolates they eat, surely this is also true about the kind of shoes they wear,'' Harris says.

On the back of the book, upmarket fashion chain LK Bennett has designed some glamorous red velvet peep-toe shoes for Harris which she will be wearing during a promotional tour in Australia and New Zealand in May.

Harris, 42, actually spends most of her time wearing trainers. ''I do have glamorous shoes but I hardly ever wear them. Most writers don't need to swan around in great big spiked heels. But I do appreciate the aesthetic value of shoes and very often I will buy a pair knowing that I may wear them once or not at all.

''I've got a lovely pair from Lanvin, made of red velvet with a diamante buckle and silk rosette. They were £300, knocked down at Brown's. They are very 17th century and gorgeous. I've worn them twice. They sit in a glass trophy cabinet in my hall because they are so beautiful, I had to put them somewhere.

''I have shoes on the mantelpiece. I have less than a dozen pairs of shoes that I don't wear but I do like to look at them.''

Harris' daughter, Anouchka, 13, takes the same size shoe as her mother, and has started to borrow some of her more elaborate shoes.

''There's a purple velvet pair of platforms which she's totally in love with, but just wants them on her mantelpiece. She doesn't wear them. She's a bit like me. We both have a passion for new rock boots, those big Goth boots with the platform soles and have a few pairs. We do wear those.

''There's something about shoes that is, in its way, almost as old and attractive and linked to folklore as chocolate is. One of the things that struck me about all the fairytales that we know is how often shoes figure there. They are often magical or allow you to travel faster or better or to different places. Or they allow you to change your identity.''

Harris was born in Yorkshire, the daughter of teachers. Her father, a Yorkshireman, met her French mother on an exchange in Brittany and brought her back to live above his parents' sweet shop. The family spoke French at home and she always felt a bit different.

''I found it hard to make friends. I remember what it was like not to fit in and have children around you who were terribly interested in all sorts of things that you found stupid and trivial."

A bookworm from an early age, Harris went on to Cambridge where she read modern and medieval languages and had a brief career in accountancy before becoming a French teacher at Leeds Boys' Grammar school. She met her husband Kevin at sixth-form college and he now works with her, doing her accountancy and paperwork.

Harris is often working on several books at one time and has recently finished her first children's novel, Runemarks, a fantasy set in a universe of nine worlds, not unlike that of Norse legend, after the end of the world. It's due out in the autumn.

But before its release she'll be packing her LK Bennetts for the forthcoming tour of The Lollipop Shoes. And if they prove too uncomfortable to wear for long periods, Harris is prepared.

''I have a clever system whereby I carry a pair of ballet shoes in my handbag so that if my shoes hurt when I leave the party I can quickly slip the ballet shoes on - which happens a lot.''

The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris (Doubleday, £17.99)