An author whose hit novel is now a West End musical says there is no feeling like sitting in a theatre and feeling the "audience responding to the story" in real time.
Gloucestershire-based Rachel Joyce's best-seller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was first published in 2012 and is now on stage at the Theatre Royal in London's Haymarket.
It tells the story of a man walking the length of England to bid farewell to a dying friend, and his own journey of healing along the way.
Joyce said of watching the performance on the first night: "It was extraordinary, the energy, the love from the audience. And there is nothing like sitting in a theatre."
Speaking to BBC Gloucestershire, she said: "You just don't really get this with a book - much as I love writing books - where you hear the audience responding to the story and the words, you're a part of it."
"So to be amongst this audience and to hear them laughing and to hear them embracing the story and the cast, and then to hear them sobbing at the end as they really understood the story, it was just really moving and special."
The musical is the fourth incarnation of Joyce's tear-jerker - it began life as a radio play before she developed it into a novel, and it was made into a film starring Jim Broadbent in 2023.
"I think I was aware quite early on that there's something quite theatrical about the story," Joyce said.
She herself was an actor for 25 years before turning to writing.
"I think the theatre is in my bones," Joyce said. "So the idea of taking this story to the theatre was always very, very appealing. It was just a question of how."
In the end, working with Chris Harper Productions, Joyce wrote the dialogue, while the music was written by indie folk artist Mike Rosenburg, who performs under the stage name Passenger.
The score was arranged by Bristol-based composer Jeremy Holland-Smith.
"I was kind of like the map and then all these brilliant people came in and created this musical that now I just can't stop going back to watch," she said.
The musical's West End run comes to an end on 18 April.
"I think everybody hopes it will have another life," said Joyce. "But I certainly don't know at the moment what that might be."
"It's very much really in the spirit of the book that you stay in the moment. You just really savour where it is for now."
The play's producer Chris Harper said he was "absolutely delighted" by the response to the musical, adding that they were looking at potentially taking it on tour "to audiences across the UK and around the world".
Despite her frequent visits to London to watch the show, Joyce has no plans to leave Gloucestershire - her home for the past 25 years.
"You know what I love? I've become someone who smiles at everybody which I think as a Londoner you are not," she said.
"I just absolutely love how the landscape changes so much within one county."